JUL  801921 


r 


BL  51  .W38  1921 
Wells,  Wesley  Raymond 
The  biological  foundations 
of  belief 


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THE  BIOLOGICAL 

FOUNDATIONS 

OF   BELIEF 


V*' 


By 


;ttf' 


WESLEY  RAYMOND  WELLS,  Ph.D. 

Assistant  Professor  of  Philosophy,  Colby 
College,   Waterville,  Maine 


BOSTON 

RICHARD  G.  BADGER 

THE   GORHAM    PRESS 


Copyright,   1921,  by  Richard  G.   Badger 


All  Rights  Reserved 


MADE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


The  Gorham  Press,  Boston,  U.  S.  A. 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  MY  BROTHER 

ORION  VASSAR  WELLS,  M.  D. 


PREFACE 

The  past  two  decades  have  witnessed  the  rapid 
growth  of  an  interest  in  the  psychology  of  religion. 
Many  books  have  been  written  in  this  field  since 
the  publication  in  1902  of  William  James's  Varie- 
ties of  Religious  Experience.  The  recent  develop- 
ment of  psychology  into  behaviorism  suggests  the 
importance  of  a  behavioristic  study  of  religion. 
Such  a  study  should  reflect  the  biological  tendencies 
of  behaviorism.  It  should  deal  with  religious  be- 
lief in  terms  of  human  behavior,  having  effects 
upon  individual  and  racial  survival.  This  book 
attempts  to  do  just  this — to  study  the  biological 
foundations  of  belief. 

Though  the  biological  view-point  is  maintained 
throughout,  the  logical  question  of  the  truth  or 
falsity  of  the  religious  beliefs  that  are  valuable 
occasionally  arises.  James  and  other  pragmatists 
have  confused  matters  of  logic  and  biology  to  the 
extent  of  claiming  that  the  survival  value  of  be- 
liefs is  a  test  of  the  truth  of  these  beliefs.  In 
order  to  avoid  the  suspicion  of  any  such  confusion 
in  this  book,  I  have  pointed  out  what  I  have 
called  the  pragmatic  fallacy,  which  is  committed 
by  such  pragmatists  as  James  and  Dr.  Schiller;  and 
I  have  pointed  out  another  fallacy  frequently  com- 

V 


VI  Preface 

mitted  by  James  and  by  numerous  others,  which 

I  have  called  the  fallacy  of  false  attribution.  I 
have  tried  to  maintain  the  thesis  that  religious 
beliefs  may  be  biologically  valuable  regardless  of 
their  truth,  and  that  they  may  survive  indefinitely 
just  because  of  this  most  fundamental  of  all  rea- 
sons, the  biological  reason.  My  position  is  stated 
at  the  outset,  in  the  first  chapter.     Then  Chapter 

II  deals  with  religious  fallacies.  Chapters  III  and 
IV  classify  religious  values,  point  out  further  bio- 
logical grounds  of  belief,  and  take  account  of 
criticisms  that  have  been  made  of  my  discussion  of 
religious  fallacies.  Chapter  V  is  a  study  of  the 
value  of  religious  beliefs  as  a  means  of  moral 
training  during  childhood  and  youth.  Chapter  V 
contains  also  a  discussion  of  the  moral  and  re- 
ligious value  of  philosophy  for  college  under- 
graduates. These  questions  of  religious  and  moral 
education  are  taken  up  in  the  light  of  a  biologically 
grounded  psychology. 

The  book  consists  entirely  of  articles  that  have 
been  published  during  the  past  four  years.  Thanks 
are  due  to  the  editors  of  the  Journal  of  Philos- 
ophy, Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods,  and  of 
the  American  Journal  of  Psychology  for  permis- 
sion to  reprint  articles  that  first  appeared  in  their 
columns.  It  is  hoped  that  these  articles  may  be 
found  to  have  sufficient  unity  of  plan  and  purpose 


Preface  vii 

to  justify  the  present  work  of  collection  and  ar- 
rangement. Such  unity  as  may  exist  is  the  result, 
first  of  all,  of  the  fact  that  all  of  the  articles  con- 
tained in  the  book  are  a  direct  outgrowth  of  my 
doctor's  thesis  written  at  Harvard  University  in 
19 1 7,  a  thesis  entitled  A  Behavioristic  Study  of 
Religious  Values. 

Wesley  Raymonb  Wells 
Colby  College,  January,  1921 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  I 

The  Biological  Value  of  Religious  Belief.  ...      i 

NOTE  TO  CHAPTER  I 

Religious  Belief  and  the  Population  Question     2 1 

CHAPTER  II 

The  Pragmatic  Fallacy  and  the  Fallacy  of 

False  Attribution 27 

CHAPTER  III 
A  Classification  of  Religious  Values 42 

CHAPTER  IV 

On  Truth  and  Survival  Value 68 

CHAPTER  V 
Religious  and  Moral  Education 93 


IX 


THE   BIOLOGICAL    FOUNDATIONS 
OF  BELIEF 


The  Biological  Foundations 
of  Belief 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  BIOLOGICAL  VALUE  OF  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF* 

SO  far  as  religious  belief  can  be  shown  to  be  a 
crucial  fact  in  human  evolution,  instrumental  in 
adapting  the  individual  and  the  race  to  the  en- 
vironment, biological  terms  may  properly  be  ex- 
tended to  include  reUgion,  or  at  least  to  include 
its  instinctive  and  emotional  sources.  Whatever 
is  essential  to  the  successful  ongoing  of  life  pro- 
cesses possesses  a  truly  biological  significance.  I 
propose  to  point  out  the  vital  importance  of  re- 
ligious belief  and  its  biological  utility  during  the 
course  of  human  evolution. 


Whether  God,  freedom,  and  immortality  are 
realities  or  not,  of  one  thing  there  is  no  question : 
it  is  a  fact,  for  any  observer  to  take  note  of,  that 
in  many  minds  there  exists  the  belief  in  these  ob- 


^This   essay  is   reprinted   from   the   American  Journal   of 
Psychology,  Vol.  XXIX  (1918),  pp.  383-92. 


2  The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

jects.  Religious  beliefs  are  real  as  psychological 
facts  regardless  of  the  reality  of  the  objects  of  the 
beliefs.  It  would  be  possible  to  construct  a  phi- 
losophy of  religion  wholly  upon  the  fact  and  the 
value  of  religious  belief,  without  raising  the  fur- 
ther question  of  the  existence  of  the  objects  be- 
lieved in,  or  even  if  we  assumed  the  unreality  of 
such  objects.  Beliefs  may  exist  and  have  value  for 
those  who  hold  them  as  true  even  though  they  are 
entirely  false,  since  the  subjective  effects  of  beliefs 
are  independent  of  the  question  of  truth;  and  it  is 
even  possible  that  religion  is  too  good  to  be  true. 

Religion  would  continue  in  the  world  indefinitely 
upon  the  sheer  basis  of  belief  as  a  psychological 
fact,  a  biologically  justified  fact,  even  if  the  whole 
scientific  and  philosophical  portion  of  mankind  had 
agreed  in  branding  all  religious  objects  as  unreal. 
James  expresses  the  emotional  necessity  of  reli- 
gious beliefs  for  the  majority  of  people  when  he 
says,^  "Materialism  and  agnosticism,  even  were 
they  true,  could  never  gain  universal  and  popular 
acceptance;  for  they  both,  alike,  give  a  solution  of 
things  which  is  irrational  to  the  practical  third  of 
our  nature,  and  in  which  we  can  never  volitionally 
feel  at  home."  Careful  observers  would  have 
said,  even  before  Professor  Leuba's  recent  study^ 

*Wm.  James,  The  Will  to  Believe,  p.  126. 
*J.  H.  Leuba,  The  Belief  in  God  and  Immortality,  Boston, 
1916. 


The  Biological  Value  of  Religious  Belief      3 

of  the  actual  religious  beliefs  of  American  scien- 
tists showed  that  it  is  so,  that  the  majority  of 
scientists  do  not  believe  in  God  or  immortality. 
This  fact  is  not  so  significant  for  the  future  of  re- 
ligion, however,  as  the  fact  that  the  majority  of 
the  parents  of  each  new  generation  do  have  reli- 
gious beliefs.  The  parents  and  homes,  the  churches 
and  general  social  background,  of  each  new  gen- 
eration, exert  a  greater  influence  upon  the  reli- 
gious beliefs  of  people  than  do  a  few  scientists  who 
have  ceased  to  require  religious  belief  in  order  to 
maintain  their  vital  equilibrium.  Mal<:ing  the 
whole  world  scientific  is  impossible. 

Beliefs  exert  a  potent  influence  on  life.  The 
psychological  and  physiological  effects  of  behef 
are  shown  strikingly  in  cases  of  primitive  taboo 
where  the  belief  that  a  taboo  has  been  violated  has, 
in  numerous  instances,  caused  death.  World- 
views,  beliefs  about  the  ultimate  things  in  man's 
total  environment,  are  important  influences  on  the 
physical  economy  of  life.  If  two  nations  or  races 
are  equal  in  all  respects  except  that  the  general 
philosophy  and  religion  of  the  one  is  optimistic, 
and  of  the  other,  pessimistic,  the  race  with  the 
optimistic  beliefs  will  survive  in  the  struggle  for 
existence,  while  the  other  race  will  be  driven  to 
the  wall.     As  Goethe  says:*    "The  real  and  sole 


*Notes   to   Westostlicher  Divan,  quoted  in   Paulsen's  Sys- 
tem of  Ethics  (Thilly's  translation),  p.  425. 


4  The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

theme  of  the  history  of  the  world  is  the  conflict 
between  belief  and  unbelief.  All  epochs  in  which 
faith  reigns  supreme,  under  whatever  form  it  may 
be,  are  bright,  uplifting,  and  fruitful  for  contem- 
poraries and  posterity.  All  epochs,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  which  unbelief,  in  any  form,  gains  a  weak 
victory,  even  though  temporarily  boasting  a  sham 
glory,  will  pass  away." 

Several  writers  have  given  clear  expression  to 
the  biological  setting  of  religious  belief.  Professor 
Leuba  says:^  "The  mere  belief  in  gods  may  of 
itself  produce  results  sufficient  to  make  of  re- 
ligion a  factor  of  the  highest  biological  impor- 
tance." "The  biological  point  of  view  affords  the 
more  fruitful  outlook.  From  this  point  of  vantage 
religion  appears  as  a  part  of  the  struggle  for  life." 
"Morality  and  religion  .  .  ,"  says  Professor 
Carver,®  "must  be  regarded  as  factors  in  the  strug- 
gle for  existence  as  truly  as  are  weapons  for  of- 
fence and  defence,  teeth  and  claws,  horns  and 
hoofs,  fur  and  feathers,  plumage,  beards,  and 
antlers."  "Who  are  the  chosen  people  is  not  a 
historical  question.  It  is  a  question  of  fact,  adap- 
tation, and  survival.    What  is  the  true  church  will 


•J.  H.  Leuba,  A  Psychological  Study  of  Religion,  pp.   14, 
16-17. 
T.  N.  Carver,  Essays  in  Social  Justice,  pp.  20,  31. 


The  Biological  Value  of  Religious  Belief      5 

never  be  determined  by  archaeological  and  his- 
torical investigation.  It  will  be  determined  by  the 
laws  of  selection  and  survival."  Of  the  actual 
religious  beliefs  of  the  past,  Read  says/  "Religion, 
in  spite  of  its  many  drawbacks,  has  been  so  useful 
that  families  and  tribes  have  been  selected  by  their 
addiction  to  it." 

The  very  fact  of  the  existence  of  religious  be- 
liefs among  all  primitive  peoples  establishes  a 
presumption  in  favor  of  the  biological  value  of 
such  beliefs.  If  at  any  time  there  have  existed 
savage  peoples  without  religious  beliefs,  they  have 
not  survived  long  in  the  struggle  for  life.  All  the 
peoples  that  have  survived  have  possessed,  among 
other  things,  religious  beliefs.  From  this  fact  the 
evolutionist  at  once  infers  that  religious  beliefs 
must  have  been  of  some  important  service  to  the 
race.  It  might  be  argued  against  this  by  some 
objectors  that  the  races  which  have  survived  have 
survived  by  virtue  of  other  kinds  of  vital  fitness,  so 
that  religious  beliefs  have  counted  neither  for  nor 
against  survival.  It  is  true  that  some  organs  exist 
the  utility  of  which  is  not  apparent.  Since  such 
variations  have  at  least  had  no  disutility,  they 
have  not  been  eliminated  through  the  elimination 
of  the  organisms  possessing  them.  But  belief  Is  of 
such  practical  Importance  that  it  can  not  by  any 


'Carveth  Read,  Natural  and  Social  Morals,  p.  226. 


6  The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

possibility  be  regarded  as  neutral,  that  is,  of  no 
influence,  favorable  or  unfavorable,  in  the  struggle 
for  existence.  Consequently  the  universal  exist- 
ence of  religious  belief  among  primitive  peoples 
is  evidence  of  its  survival  value. 

Some  critics  might  admit  that  rehgious  belief 
has  been  valuable  in  the  past,  during  the  infancy 
of  the  race,  while  they  would  argue  that,  like  the 
vermiform  appendix,  it  has  outgrown  its  useful- 
ness, or  has  even  become  a  source  of  injury.  G. 
E.  Moore,  for  example,  speaking  of  religious  be- 
lief in  modern  society,  says  that  "there  is  at  least 
good  room  to  doubt  whether  it  ever  does  much 
good."^  It  can  be  shown,  however,  that  religious 
behef  still  possesses  value. 

I  would  repeat  that  the  question  of  truth  is  ir- 
relevant to  a  discussion  of  the  value  of  religious 
belief.  I  am  studying  the  value  of  beliefs  in  their 
psychological  context,  without  regard  to  the  logical 
matter  of  truth.  Actually,  most  of  the  early  re- 
ligious beliefs  have  had  unreal  objects,  as  all 
would  agree,  but  their  value  is  not  thereby  vitiated. 
Thus  Read  says,^  "As  for  the  falsity  of  a  whole 
rehgion  in  its  peculiar  doctrines,  that  (I  fear  we 
must  admit)  does  not  necessarily  render  it  debas- 


""The   Value   of    Religion,"    The   International   Journal   of 
Ethics,  Vol.  XII  (1901-02),  p.  97. 
^Op.  cit.,  p.  229. 


The  Biological  Value  of  Religious  Belief      7 

ing  or  pernicious;  for  we  have  here  an  extreme 
case  of  that  astonishing  phenomenon  in  human 
life,  the  utility  of  illusion."  And  Rashdall  says  in 
like  manner,  "Error  and  delusion  may  be  valuable 
elements  in  evolution ;  to  a  certain  extent  .  .  they 
have  actually  been  so."^°  Primitive  religions  have 
been  the  cause  of  many  evils,  it  is  true,  but  such 
evils  have  been  more  than  counterbalanced  by 
numerous  positive  values. 

I  said  above  that  religious  belief  cannot  be  re- 
garded as  a  neutral  factor  in  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence. The  enormous  effect  of  strong  behef  is 
well  illustrated  by  instances  of  violated  taboos 
among  primitive  peoples.  Frazer  cites  many  strik- 
ing examples."  A  Maori  slave,  upon  being  told 
that  the  food  which  he  had  eaten  had  belonged  to  a 
chieftain,  and  was  therefore  taboo,  "was  seized 
by  the  most  extraordinary  convulsions  and  cramp 
in  the  stomach,  which  never  ceased  till  he  died 
about  sundown  the  same  day.  .  .  A  Maori  wo- 
man having  eaten  of  some  fruit,  and  being  after- 
wards told  that  the  fruit  had  been  taken  from  a 
tabooed  place,  exclaimed  that  the  spirit  of  the 
chief,  whose  sanctity  had  been  thus  profaned, 
would  kill  her.     This  was  in  the  afternoon,  and 


"Hastings  Rashdall,  The  Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,  Vol.  II, 
p.  209. 

"J.  G.  Frazer,  The  Golden  Bough,  3rd  edit..  Part  II,  Taboo 
and  the  Perils  of  the  Soul.    See  pp.  135-137. 


8  The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

the  next  day  by  twelve  o'clock  she  was  dead." 
There  is  on  record  a  case  of  a  negro  who  ate  a 
wild  hen,  which  was  taboo,  upon  the  supposition 
that  it  was  a  domesticated  fowl.  Four  years  later 
he  was  told  by  his  former  host  what  he  had  eaten, 
whereupon  he  "immediately  fell  a-trembling,  and 
suffered  himself  to  be  so  far  possessed  with  the 
effects  of  imagination,  that  he  died  in  less  than 
twenty-four  hours."  Many  other  instances  of  a 
similar  sort  are  cited  by  Frazer.  Such  examples  of 
the  effects  of  behef  in  the  case  of  violated  taboos 
illustrate  the  general  potency  of  belief.  In  the 
majority  of  cases,  of  course,  taboos  are  not  violat- 
ed, on  account  of  the  beliefs  about  the  consequences 
of  violation,  and  so  the  race  here  receives  its  first 
moral  instruction. 

Though  the  hygienic  value  of  optimistic  reli- 
gious beliefs  in  the  case  of  the  higher  religions  Is 
important  enough  to  make  of  religion  a  significant 
factor  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  religious  be- 
liefs have  been  of  biological  utility  to  a  greater 
extent  through  their  moral  influence.  In  such 
forms  of  the  higher  rehglons  as  Christianity,  both 
the  moral  and  hygienic  values  are  important. 
There  are  certain  standards  of  conduct  that  are 
justified  by  the  forces  of  natural  selection,  and  it 
seems  to  be  a  fact  that  religious  beliefs  are  the  only 
sufficient  instrumentality  permanently  to  maintain 


The  Biological  Value  of  Religious  Belief      9 

these  standards.  McDougall  says^^  that  the  behef 
in  immortality,  which  is  one  of  the  most  central  of 
rehgious  beliefs,  is  essential  to  the  survival  of  any 
nation  because  of  its  moralizing  influence  upon 
thought  and  conduct. 

Some  writers  have  attributed  the  beginnings  and 
even  the  continued  maintenance  of  all  morahty  to 
religious  belief.  Thus  Pfleiderer  says,"  "The 
historical  beginning  of  all  morality  is  to  be  found 
in  religion."  And  Caird  says,"  "Religion  and 
morality  are  necessary  correlates  of  each  other." 
Such  extreme  views  are  untenable,  for  certainly 
in  modern  society  religion  is  not  an  essential  condi- 
tion of  morality  with  all  men;  and  in  primitive  so- 
ciety many  kinds  of  right  conduct  have  an  instinc- 
tive basis,  especially  in  the  family  relationships. 
Nevertheless,  rehgious  behef  has  enhanced  primi- 
tive morality,  and  continues,  on  the  whole,  to  pos- 
sess positive  moral  value. 

Primitive  morahty  is  fundamentally  a  matter 
of  the  customs,  or  mores,  of  the  group.  Morahty 
is  always  and  everywhere  a  social  phenomenon, 
arising  from  the  interaction  of  individuals  in 
groups.  A  group  of  Hobbesian  individuals  is 
biologically  inconceivable.     Man,  like  most  mem- 


"Wm.  McDougall,  Body  and  Mind,  Preface,  pp.  xiii,  xiv. 
"Otto    Pfleiderer,    Philosophy    of    Religion    (Stewart    and 
Menzies,  translators),  Vol.  IV,  p.  230. 
"Edward  Caird,  The  Evolution  of  Religion,  Vol.  I,  p.  237. 


lo        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

bers  of  the  animal  kingdom,  possesses  various  so- 
cial instincts.  Group  selection^^  has  tended  to  elim- 
inate all  of  the  too  self-centered  individuals.  Since 
a  group  is  stronger  than  an  individual  in  the  strug- 
gle for  existence,  only  groups  have  survived;  and, 
furthermore,  the  existence  of  groups  requires  the 
presence  of  social  instincts  in  the  individuals  that 
make  up  the  groups.  Altruism  is  just  as  instinctive 
as  egoism,  and  is  probably  derived  chiefly  from  the 
parental  instinct.  In  many  of  the  lower  animals 
the  social  instincts  manifest  themselves  in  various 
forms  of  gregariousness  and  mutual  helpfulness, 
and  much  more  is  this  the  case  with  man.  Thus 
primitive  man  is  fitted  for  a  moral  life  within 
groups  by  his  aboriginal  inheritance. 

Acts  are  judged  right  or  wrong  by  primitive  man 
according  as  they  conform  or  not  to  the  group 
customs.  So  far  as  primitive  customs  are  instinc- 
tive in  origin,  they  have  survival  value,  on  the 
whole,  since  the  instincts  are  one  of  the  products 
of  the  struggle  for  existence.  Religious  beliefs  en- 
ter, however,  and  complicate  the  situation.  Many 
of  the  customs  have  a  religious  origin,  and  others 
are  enforced  by  religious  beliefs,  especially  by  be- 
liefs in  taboo.     Taboo  is  the  original  categorical 


"See  P.  Kropotkin,  Mutual  Aid,  a  Factor  of  Evolution; 
Edward  Westermarck,  The  Origin  and  Development  of  th3 
Moral  Ideas.  Vol.  II,  Ch.  XXXIV;  Wm.  James,  Principles 
of  Psychology,  Vol.  I,  p.  325. 


The  Biological  Value  of  Religious  Belief    1 1 

imperative.  It  corresponds,  in  upholding  early 
customs,  to  the  "thou  shall  not"  of  the  Mosaic 
code.  Taboo  is  chiefly  religious  in  origin,  being 
based  upon  the  belief  in  awful  and  mysterious 
penalties  that  will  inevitably  follow  the  infring- 
ment  of  certain  rules.  Since  primitive  moraUty 
consists  of  primitive  customs,  or  mores,  taboo  is 
instrumental  to  primitive  morality  through  enfor- 
cing the  mores.  There  are  other  means,  such  as 
public  approval  and  disapproval,  and  physical 
force,  of  enforcing  primitive  customs,  but  belief 
in  taboos  is  one  of  the  very  strongest  guardians  of 
primitive  group  morality.  Primitive  customs  have 
possessed  some  disvalue,  through  hindering  prog- 
ress, but  they  have  had  positive  survival  value  on 
the  whole;  and  taboo,  in  enforcing  customs,  has 
possessed  value  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
Furthermore,  the  primitive  mores  have  contained 
the  germs  of  much  of  our  present  morahty;  and 
taboo  has,  therefore,  been  instrumental  to  the 
maintenance  of  conduct  that  is  right,  as  judged  by 
modern  standards. 

There  have  been  other  values  of  early  religious 
belief.  Religious  belief  has  had  what  may  be 
called  industrial  value  so  far  as  the  industrial  arts 
have  developed  in  connection  with  the  worship  of 
the  gods.  Religious  belief  has  had  scientific  and 
philosophic  value  wherever  pure  science  and  phi- 


12        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

losophy  have  developed  from  religion.  Belief  in 
spirits,  hero-ancestors,  and  gods,  by  increasing 
the  extent  and  complexity  of  primitive  man's  en- 
vironment, has  stimulated  intellectual  activity.  The 
worship  of  heavenly  bodies  has  at  least  attracted 
serious  attention  to  them,  and  consequently  the 
science  of  astronomy  owes  something  to  early  re- 
ligious interests.  Mythological  accounts  of  the 
origin  and  nature  of  the  world  have  stimulated 
curiosity  about  scientific  questions,  and  have  given 
place  to  more  scientific  cosmogonies  and  cosmol- 
ogies. The  various  professions  have  had  a  re- 
hgious  origin.  Priests  and  chieftains  are  often 
identical  among  primitive  peoples.  The  medical 
profession  has  evolved  from  the  work  of  medicine 
men.  The  first  teachers  were  the  priests  and  head- 
men, who  gave  instruction  to  the  youth  in  the  in- 
itiation ceremonies.  There  has  been  a  close  his- 
torical connection  between  theology  and  philos- 
ophy; and  the  early  rehgious  interest,  first  becom- 
ing intellectualized  in  the  form  of  theology,  has 
always  tended  to  go  over  into  general  philosophy. 
Among  other  values  of  early  religious  belief  are 
artistic,  social,  and  legal  or  political  values.  Prim- 
itive religious  beliefs  have  had  artistic  value  so  far 
as  poetry,  music,  sculpture,  and  architecture  have 
developed  out  of  the  worship  of  the  gods.  Dan- 
cing and  music  were  originally  of  religious  signifi- 


The  Biological  Value  of  Religious  Belief    13 

cance.  The  drama  traces  its  origin  to  religious 
ceremonials.  The  first  poetry  consisted  of  stories 
of  the  gods.  The  first  architecture  worthy  of  the 
name  arose  in  the  construction  of  altars  and  tem- 
ples. In  the  creation  of  images  of  the  gods,  sculp- 
ture appeared.  Early  painting  represented  the 
deeds  of  the  gods  and  of  ancestoral  heroes  who 
had  been  deified.  Social  value  has  attached  to  early 
religious  beliefs  wherever  the  beliefs  have  been 
a  bond  uniting  groups  in  the  worship  of  common 
deities,  supplementing  the  instinctive  basis  of 
group  unity.  Legal  and  political  values  of  early 
religious  beliefs  appear  in  the  development  of 
property  rights  and  stable  forms  of  government. 
Taboo  has  played  an  important  part  in  the  de- 
velopment of  rights  of  property.  Holy  places  are 
at  first  the  property  of  the  gods.  In  the  case  of 
taboo  on  chiefs,  it  is  sometimes  the  case  that  every- 
thing that  a  chief  touches  becomes  his  property. 
It  is  of  importance  for  social  evolution  that  the 
conception  of  property  rights  should  have  arisen 
early.  More  obvious  is  the  connection  between 
religion  and  government  or  law.  The  legal  pro- 
fession was  originally  undifferentiated  from  the 
priesthood,  and  the  first  laws  of  the  state  were 
religious  laws. 

Not  only  the  moral  value  of  early  religious  be- 
liefs, but  also  the  other  values,  which  I  have  called 


14        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

industrial,  scientific,  artistic,  social,  and  legal,  have 
been  genuine  values  of  a  biological  sort. 

II 

The  biological  value  of  religious  belief  on  the 
level  of  the  higher  religions,  including  Christianity, 
may  not  at  first  seem  so  obvious  as  in  the  case  of 
the  primitive  religions.  It  is,  however,  even  more 
important,  inasmuch  as  our  present-day  interests 
are  vitally  affected  in  such  practical  ways  by  re- 
ligious belief. 

The  most  fundamental  distinction  between  the 
lower,  nature  religions,  and  the  higher,  redemptive 
religions  may  be  expressed  in  terms  of  the  differ- 
ence between  desires  for  satisfactions  of  a  tem- 
poral and  physical  sort,  and  desires  for  tran- 
scendent satisfactions.  In  the  nature  religions  man 
is  satisfied  if  he  has  worldly  prosperity;  and  he  be- 
lieves in  and  desires  transcendent  realities  only  as 
instruments  to  the  attainment  of  his  worldly  de- 
sires. It  was  not  until  a  considerable  degree  of 
civilization  had  been  reached  that  the  redemptive 
religions  could  appear  and  maintain  themselves. 
Natural  selection,  perhaps,  accounts  for  the  sup- 
pression of  interests  of  a  redemptive  sort  in  the 
periods  of  prehistoric  savagery  and  of  primitive 
culture,  through  eliminating  any  idealistic  individ- 
uals that  may  have  appeared.     A  Wordsworthian 


The  Biological  Value  of  Religious  Belief    15 

is  not  the  kind  of  nature  worshipper  that  would  be 
fit  to  survive  among  primeval  savages;  but,  in  a 
social  order  of  more  refinement,  idealistic  beliefs 
possess  a  positive  biological  value  for  many  in- 
dividuals. 

In  the  higher  developments  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness the  hygienic  value  of  religious  belief, 
which  now  becomes  instrumental  to  optimism  and 
hence  to  health  and  survival,  is  perhaps  a  more 
important  value  than  the  moral  value,  though  the 
latter  is  still  significant.  The  complete  denial  of 
the  existence  of  the  objects  of  religious  beliefs 
would  reduce  a  large  portion  of  mankind  logically 
to  the  acceptance  of  Mr.  Russell's  statement,'" 
"Only  on  the  firm  foundation  of  unyielding  de- 
spair, can  the  soul's  habitation  henceforth  be  safely 
built."  This  would  be  the  logic  of  the  situation, 
but  not  the  biology  of  it.  Despair  means  death, 
literally.  A  race  that  despaired  would  perish  from 
the  earth;  but  a  hopeful  faith  means  life,  and  gives 
life  abundantly.  Faith  is  biologically  necessary 
for  the  human  race,  and  it  is  a  psychological  fact 
that  "hope  springs  eternal  in  the  human  breast." 
Mr.  Russell's  statement  is  contradicted  by  the  facts 
of  biology  and  psychology,  for  on  a  foundation 
of  despair  no  habitation  at  all  for  the  soul  can  pos- 
sibly be  built. 

"Bertrand  Russell,  Philosophical  Essays,  p.  61. 


1 6        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

Such  a  pessimism  as  Mr.  Russell's  is  due  as 
much  to  the  pessimist's  high  ideals  as  to  his  beliefs 
about  the  objective  nature  of  reality.  Pessimism 
results  from  the  belief  in  a  fundamental  misfit  be- 
tween reality  and  the  objects  of  desire.  The  man 
who  is  content  to  be  a  brute,  with  a  brute's  desires, 
is  not  pessimistic  if  he  finds  the  world  funda- 
mentally brutal.  But  to  the  man  aware  of  the 
"noon-day  brightness  of  human  genius,"  pessimism 
comes  if  he  beheves  that  "the  lofty  thoughts  that 
ennoble  his  little  day"  are  insufficiently  grounded 
in  the  ultimate  nature  of  things. 

For  large  numbers  of  individuals  in  modern 
society,  belief  in  the  reality  of  another  world  of 
which  the  physical  world  is  but  a  shadow  and  a 
promise,  is  essential  to  optimism  and  to  a  healthy 
state  of  mind  in  general.  Professor  Hocking's 
assertion"  that  optimism  requires  the  denial  of  the 
reality  of  the  world  as  it  appears  to  be,  together 
with  belief  in  transcendent  realities,  is  justified  by 
the  psychological  facts  so  far  as  many  persons 
(though  not  all)  are  concerned.  The  '^Welt- 
schmerz  bred  of  reflection,"  or  religious  pessi- 
mism, according  to  James,  "consists  in  nothing  but 
a  religious  demand  to  which  there  comes  no  normal 
religious  reply."^®   "Its  great  reflective  source  has 


"W.  E.  Hocking,  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experi- 
ence, p.  i68. 
"Wm.  James,  op.  cit.,  p.  39. 


The  Biological  Value  of  Religious  Belief    1 7 

at  all  times  been  a  contradiction  between  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature  and  the  craving  of  the  heart  to 
believe  that  behind  nature  there  is  a  spirit  whose 
expression  nature  is."^^  "No  brute  can  have  this 
sort  of  melancholy;  no  man  who  is  irreligious  can 
become  its  prey.  It  is  the  sick  shudder  of  the 
frustrated  religious  demand,"^" 

The  inevitable  pessimism  of  naturalism  for  all 
persons  of  sensitive  natures  who  are  also  reflective, 
and  who  take  a  wide  view  of  reality,  has  been  a 
frequent  theme  in  prose  and  in  poetry.  Some  lines 
in  James  Thomson's  "City  of  Dreadful  Night" 
express  vividly  the  despair  of  religious  pessimism: 

i 
"  'The  man  speaks  sooth,  alas  I   the  man  speaks  sooth ; 
We  have  no  personal  life  beyond  the  grave; 
There  is  no  God ;  Fate  knov^rs  nor  wrath  nor  ruth : 
Can  I  find  here  the  comfort  which  I  crave? 

"  'Speak  not  of  comfort  where  no  comfort  is, 

Speak  not  at  all:    can  words  make  foul  things  fair? 
Our  life's  a  cheat,  our  death  a  black  abyss : 
Hush,  and  be  mute,  envisaging  despair.' " 

James  points  out  two  possible  ways  of  relieving 
such  pessimism.  "The  longing  to  read  the  facts 
religiously  may  cease,  and  leave  the  bare  facts  by 
themselves;  or  supplementary  facts  may  be  dis- 
covered or  believed  in,  which  permit  the  religious 
reading  to  go  on."^^     The  first  alternative  would 


^^Ihid.,  p.  40. 
^"Ibid.,  p.  42. 
'^Ibid.,  p.  41. 


1 8        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

mean  the  giving  up  of  religion  and  the  acceptance 
of  a  materialistic  philosophy.  It  is  true  that  such 
a  solution  is  accepted  by  many  persons,  but  James 
emphasizes  correctly  the  biological  impossibility 
of  the  general  acceptance  of  materialistic  views  by 
all  of  mankind.^^  A  spiritual  view,  on  the  other 
hand,  releases  hope  and  moral  courage;  and 
hope  and  moral  courage  are  among  the  things 
men  live  by.  Such  religions  as  Christianity  and 
Buddhism  are  essentially  religions  of  deliverance 
from  the  vanity  of  worldly  desires.  Buddhism  is 
pessimistic  so  far  as  the  physical  world  is  con- 
cerned, but  its  adherents  are  made  optimistic,  and 
so  are  enabled  to  survive  in  the  physical  world, 
through  their  beliefs  in  transcendent  realties. 

Browning's  optimism  was  based  upon  religious 
idealism.  Reality,  as  he  believed  it  to  be,  coin- 
cided with  what  he  valued  most.  Abt  Vogler's 
keys  gave  their  sounds  to  the  wish  of  the  musi- 
cian's soul.  In  music  this  "wish  flowed  visibly 
forth."  The  man  with  an  idealistic  temperament 
will  be  an  optimist  only  if  he  believes  that  this 
"palace  of  music,"  the  objectification  of  lofty  as- 
piration, is  "founded  flat  on  the  nether  springs"  of 
realty.  The  religious  idealist  experiences  all  the 
emotions  of  spiritual  sovereignty,  believing,  with 
the  creative  musical  genius  of  Browning's  poem., 

"Ibid..  Ch.  IV. 


The  Biological  Value  of  Religious  Belief    19 

that  "  'tis  we  musicians  know."  By  him,  realty  is 
taken  to  be  such  as  to  satisfy  all  his  deepest  long- 
ings.   He  believes  that: 

"All  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good  shall  exist; 
Not   its   semblance,   but  itself;    no  beauty,   nor   good,  nor 
power 
Whose  voice  has  gone  forth,  but  each  survives  for  the  melo- 
dist 
When  eternity  affirms  the  conception  of  an  hour." 

Though  man's  emotional  nature  in  so  many 
cases  requires  Idealistic  and  religious  beliefs,  it  by 
no  means  follows  that  such  beliefs  are  true.  To 
maintain  that  the  value  of  idealism  implies  its 
truth  would  be  to  commit  the  pragmatic  fallacy. '^^ 
But  there  Is  every  reason  to  think  that  large  num- 
bers will  continue  to  accept  religious  idealism  as 
true,  simply  because  in  so  many  cases  man's  emo- 
tions determine  his  beliefs.  Those  who  predict 
the  "irrellgion  of  the  future"  fail  to  take  into 
account  the  emotional  and  temperamental  basis 
of  belief.  We  may  correctly  conceive  of  the  con- 
flict between  religion  and  Irrellglon,  Idealism  and 
materialism,  as  a  biological  struggle  between  the 
"tender-minded"  and  the  "tough-minded" ;  and 
the  biological  advantage  lies  to  some  extent  with 
the  "tender-minded"  so  far  as  their  emotional 
cravings  are  satisfied  by  religious  beliefs.  Reli- 
ious  beliefs  not  only  make  for  optimism,  but  are 


'See  below,  Ch.  II. 


20        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

also  instrumental  in  motivating  moral  endeavor; 
and,  consequently,  in  the  highest  as  well  as  in  the 
lowest  forms  of  religion,  religious  beliefs  have 
important  biological  values. 


NOTE  TO  CHAPTER  I 

RELIGIOUS   BELIEF  AND  THE   POPULATION 
QUESTION^ 

SUCH  considerations  as  have  been  presented  in 
Chapter  I  ought  to  be  supplemented  by  an  ac- 
count of  one  further  situation,  a  very  specific  and 
concrete  situation,  in  which  rehgious  belief  mani- 
fests its  biological  value  most  strikingly.  I  refer  to 
the  correlation  between  religious  belief  and  a  rela- 
tively high  birth-rate,  especially  in  the  case  of  be- 
lief of  a  somewhat  legalistic  sort  such  as  is  now  best 
exemplified  in  Catholicism.  This  correlation  is 
very  significant.  It  shows  that  religious  belief  pos- 
sesses survival  value  of  a  high  order. 

The  connection  between  religious  belief  and  the 
birth-rate  in  ancient  history  is  a  well-known  fact. 
Fustel  de  Coulanges^  has  pointed  out  how,  in  the 
patriarchal  famihes  of  the  ancient  Greeks  and 
Romans,  religion  required  the  continuity  of  the 
family.  The  fate  of  the  ancestral  spirits  was  be- 
lieved to   depend  upon   offerings   made   at   their 


'Reprinted  from  the  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol. 
XXXI    (1920),  pp.  204-207. 

'The  Ancient  City,  (translation  by  Willard  Small),  Boston, 
nth  edition,  igoi. 

21 


2  2        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

tombs  by  their  descendants.  Continuity  of  the 
family  was  required  for  the  sake  of  the  sustenance 
of  the  departed  ancestors.  Celibacy  was  an  im- 
piety, forbidden  by  religion  and  also  by  civil  law 
when  law  arose  out  of  religious  requirements  as 
something  distinct  from  them.  The  ancient  laws 
of  Rome  forbade  celibacy.^  The  ancient  Hindus 
had  similar  laws.  For  the  Hindus  as  for  the 
Greeks  and  Romans  the  extinction  of  a  family 
caused  the  ruin  of  the  family  religion,  and  this  was 
to  be  avoided  by  all  means.*  Among  the  ancient 
Hebrews  also  it  was  a  fundamental  religious  duty 
to  "be  fruitful  and  multiply." 

All  this,  however,  is  a  matter  of  ancient  history. 
It  is  more  important  to  inquire  about  the  relation 
between  religious  belief  and  increase  of  popula- 
tion in  modern  society. 

In  the  first  place,  it  seems  a  matter  of  common 
observation  that,  in  general,  the  birth-rate  is  high- 
est in  families  most  influenced  by  religious  belief. 
The  reasons  that  might  be  assigned  as  the  cause  of 
this  are  various.  In  some  cases  the  religiously 
inchned  may  feel  a  mystic  obligation  to  rear  a 
family.  Fear  of  a  concrete  hell  for  those  faihng  to 
fulfill  their  parental  obligations  may  be  the  mo- 
tivating power  in  other  cases.     Mr.  Russell  seems 


*See  Cicero,  De  Legibus,  B'k  III. 
*See  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  op.  cit.,  p.  63, 


Religious  Belief  and  Population  Question    23 

to  incline  to  this  explanation,  and  to  think  that  the 
belief  in  hell-fire  is  thus  biologically  justified,  when 
he  says,  "Men  and  women  who  can  still  believe 
the  Catholic  faith  will  have  a  biological  advantage; 
gradually  a  race  will  grow  up  which  will  be  im- 
pervious to  all  the  assaults  of  reason,  and  will 
believe  imperturbably  that  limitation  of  families 
leads  to  hell-fire."^  A  third  possible  explanation 
of  the  connection  between  a  high  birth-rate  and 
religious  belief  is  the  partial  identity  of  the  pa- 
rental instinct  and  the  religious  sentiment.  Accord- 
ing to  McDougall,*^  the  tender  emotion,  which  is  a 
correlate  of  the  parental  instinct,  is  a  constituent 
also  of  the  religious  sentiment. 

In  the  second  place,  statistical  studies  have  sup- 
ported the  conclusions  of  casual  observation  by 
showing  it  to  be  a  fact  that,  where  religious  belief 
thrives,  there  a  relatively  high  birth-rate  is  gen- 
erally to  be  found.  The  Italian  economist  Nitti^ 
has  called  attention  to  this  fact.  M.  Leroy-Beau- 
lieu  has  made  a  statistical  study  of  the  situation, 
not  only  in  France,  but  in  various  other  countries 
as  well.  He  has  found  a  high  birth-rate  among 
the  Spanish  and  Italian  Catholics,  and  in  those 
sections  of  France  where  the  Catholic  church  is 


*Bertrand  Russell,  "Marriage  and  the  Population  Question," 
International  Journal  of  Ethics,  Vol.  XXVI  (1915-16),  p.  451. 

'See  Wm.  McDougall,  Social  Psychology,  pp.  66ff  and  Ch. 
XIII. 

'Francesco  S.  Nitti,  Population  and  the  Social  Order 
(translation),  pp.  118-24. 


24        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

strong.*  McDougalP  accepts  the  contention  of 
Benjamin  Kidd^°  that  one  great  influence  of  re- 
ligious belief  has  been,  and  continues  to  be,  its 
instrumentality  as  a  support  of  the  parental  in- 
stinct against  the  tendency  towards  prudential  lim- 
itation of  the  birth-rate.  Sidney  Webb"  explains 
the  high  birth-rate  among  Catholics  in  England  by 
reference  to  the  fact  that  the  Catholic  church  ab- 
solutely forbids  any  regulation  of  the  marriage 
state.  Of  the  distribution  of  the  birth-rate  he 
says,"  "It  is  significant  that  Ireland  is  the  only  part 
of  the  United  Kingdom  in  which  the  birth-rate  has 
not  declined;  that  in  Ireland  itself  it  has  declined  a 
little  in  semi-Protestant  Belfast,  and  not  at  all 
in  Roman  Catholic  Dublin;  and  that  in  the  towns 
of  Great  Britain  the  decline  is  least  in  Liverpool, 
Salford,  Manchester,  and  Glasgow — towns  in 
which  the  proportion  of  Roman  Catholics  is  con- 
siderable."    Webb  finds  that  among  the  metro- 


'Paul  Leroy-Beaulieu,  La  Question  de  la  Population.  See 
especially  pp.  395-402.  Leroy-Beaulieu  gives  the  following 
explanation  of  the  influence  of  religion,  especially  Catholi- 
cism, on  population :  "La  religion  catholique ,  plus  encore  que 
toutes  les  autres,  enseigne  la  resignation  a  son  sort,  condamne 
I'egolsme  et  deconseille  I'anibition:  c'est-a-dire,  q'elle  exalte 
le  sentiment  qui  tend  a  rendre  les  families  nombreuses  et 
qu'elle  reprouve  ceux  qui  tendent  a  diminuer  le  nombre  des 
enfants."     (Pp.  397,  98)- 

"Op.  cit.,  p.  272. 

"See  Benjamin  Kidd,  Social  Evolution,  p.  295;  also  Ch.  V. 
See  also  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Whetham,  The  Family  and  the  Nation. 

^^The  Decline  of  the  Birth-Raie,  Fabian  Tract,  No.  131, 1907. 

"/fetd.,  p.  9. 


Religious  Belief  and  Population  Question    25 

politan  boroughs  the  highest  birth-rate  is  "in  those 
boroughs  in  which  the  Irish  Roman  Catholics  (and 
the  Jews  who,  in  this  respect,  are  in  the  same  posi- 
tion) are  most  numerous. "^^  Many  economists 
have  tried  to  correlate  high  and  low  birth-rates 
with  conditions  of  poverty  and  wealth,  but  Webb 
shows  that  there  is  a  closer  correlation  with  reli- 
gious belief  than  with  economic  conditions.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  however,  poverty  and  religious 
belief  frequently  exist  together  since  many  people 
find  compensation  in  religion  for  the  lack  of  the 
material  satisfactions  of  life. 

For  a  most  complete  and  convincing  array  of 
statistics  upon  this  subject,  Mr.  Meyrick  Booth's 
article,  "Religious  Belief  as  Affecting  the  Growth 
of  Population,""  should  be  consulted.  Booth 
shows,  for  example,  that,  according  to  the  Cath- 
olic Year  Book  for  19 14,  the  birth-rate  per  1,000 
of  Roman  Catholics  in  Great  Britain  was  38.6, 
while  the  average  rate  for  the  whole  population 
was  but  24.  In  the  United  States,  among  those 
states  which,  according  to  the  religious  census  of 
1906,  had  a  small  population  of  Catholics,  the 
birth-rate  was  low,  averaging  15  or  less  per 
1,000.     On  the  other  hand,  in  five  states  with  a 


^Ibid.,  p.  9. 

*In  the  Hibbert  Journal,  Vol.  XIII  (1914-15),  pp.  138-54. 


26        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

large  proportion  of  Catholics,  the  birth-rate  aver- 
aged  about  23  or  24  per  1,000/^ 

There  may  be  a  temperamental  basis  for  sus- 
ceptibility to  religious  belief,  and  temperament  is 
hereditary.  As  McDougall  says,'*^  basing  his  con- 
clusions on  the  studies  made  by  Karl  Pearson,^^ 
about  one-half  of  each  generation  is  recruited 
from  one-quarter  of  the  preceding  generation. 
The  quarter  with  the  highest  birth-rate  is,  as  I 
have  shown,  the  most  religious  portion  of  society. 
So  far,  then,  as  there  is  a  temperamental  basis  for 
religious  belief,  and  so  far  as  temperament  is 
hereditary,  the  religious  temperament,  and  conse- 
quently religious  belief,  can  not  die  out  while  the 
birth-rate  is  highest  among  those  possessing  the 
requisite  temperament. 

The  correlation  between  religious  belief  and  a 
relatively  high  birth-rate  is  most  conclusive  evi- 
dence of  the  biological  value  of  religious  belief. 
If  unbelievers  are  not  so  much  interested  as  others 
in  founding  families,  then  their  unbelief  perishes 
with  them;  while  religious  belief  springs  up  in 
each  new  generation  from  a  perennial  source  of 
vital  human  need. 


"Booth's  article  is  a  careful  study  of  the  situation,  and 
gives  many  tables  of  statistics,  which  should  be  consulted  by 
any  one  who  is  not  convinced  of  the  importance  of  religious 
belief  as  influencing  population  increase.  All  the  statistics 
used  by  Booth  are  uninfluenced  by  the  World  War,  since  they 
are  for  years  not  later  than  1914. 

"Op.  cit.,  p.  273. 

"See  Carl  Pearson,  Chances  of  Death. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  PRAGMATIC  FALLACY  AND  THE  FALLACY  OF 
FALSE  ATTRIBUTION^ 

f 

THERE  are  two  fallacies  which  are  met  with 
so  frequently  in  the  literature  of  the  philos- 
ophy of  religion  that  they  deserve  explicit  men- 
tion. The  first,  arising  from  a  confusion  between 
the  value  and  the  truth  of  religious  beliefs,  is  so 
characteristic  of  the  pragmatic  way  of  thinking 
in  the  field  of  religion  that  it  may  properly  be 
labeled  the  pragmatic  fallacy.  The  second  fal- 
lacy arises  from  the  attribution  of  the  so-called 
religious  experience  to  outside,  "higher"  forces  in 
cases  where,  in  reality,  the  cause  of  the  experience 
is  merely  physiological — from  "below"  and  not 
from  "above."  This  may  be  called  the  fallacy  of 
false  attribution. 


'Reprinted,  with  change  of  title,  from  the  Journal  of  Phil- 
osophy, Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods,  Vol.  XIV  (1917), 
PP-  653-660.  Since  I  published  this  article,  in  1917,  Professor 
Leuba  (Psychological  Bulletin,  Vol.  XVI,  p.  66,  note)  has 
called  my  attention  to  the  fact  that  he  pointed  out  the  fal- 
lacy of  false  attribution,  without  naming  it,  in  his  discussion 
of  James's  mysticism  in  1904  (International  Journal  of  Ethics, 
Vol.  XIV,  pp.  323-29).  He  says,  nevertheless,  that  my  paper 
"may  claim  the  merit  of  providing  names  for  long  recognized 
fallacies"  (Loc.  cit.,  p.  63). 

27 


28        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

I 

When  value  and  truth  are  distinguished,  and 
when  it  is  seen  that  in  many  cases  beliefs  that  are 
clearly  false  still  have  obvious  value  for  those  who 
hold  them  as  true,  then  the  argument  so  com- 
monly used  that,  since  certain  religious  beliefs  pos- 
sess value  for  the  believers,  they  are  therefore 
true,  is  seen  to  be  unsound.  Truth  is  definable  in 
terms  of  correspondence  with  facts.  Pragmatists 
accept  this  when  they  say,  as  James  does,  that  be- 
liefs "work,"  and  are  true,  only  if  they  agree  with 
reality;  and  they  take  the  "working"  of  a  belief 
as  evidence  that  the  belief  does  agree  with  reality. 
Truth  is  something  that  belongs  to  the  subject- 
matter  of  logic,  while  value  has  a  field  of  its  own. 
Value  is  the  subject-matter  of  the  special  science 
of  value,  and  there  is  a  growing  agreement  in  de- 
fining value  in  terms  of  organic  interests.  Things 
are  made  valuable  when  they  are  liked  or  desired, 
V  hen  satisfaction  is  derived  from  their  presence 
or  possession.  The  statement  will,  upon  reflec- 
tion, be  challenged  by  few  that  there  is  nothing 
either  good  or  bad,  but  liking  or  disliking  makes 
it  so.  Those  who  do  disagree  with  such  a  defini- 
tion, calling  value  indefinable,  as  Mr.  Russell  and 
Mr.  Moore  do,-  or  defining  it  in  terms  of  har- 


"Bertrand   Russell,   Philosophical   Essays,  pp.   4-15;    G.    E. 
Moore,  Principia  Ethica,  pp.  5-14. 


Pragmatic  Fallacy  and  False  Attribution    29 

mony  or  fitness,^  etc.,  will  still  avoid  any  confusion 
between  value  and  truth.  Beliefs  may  be  true  or 
false;  they  may  also  have  value  or  disvalue.  In 
most  cases,  probably,  true  beliefs  are  valuable, 
and  false  beliefs  have  disvalue,  but  not  In  all 
cases.  It  is  a  fact  that  false  religious  beliefs  have 
possessed  value  in  the  course  of  history;  and  it  is 
undoubtedly  true  that  false  religious  beliefs  still 
possess  value  under  some  conditions. 

Pragmatism  is  biological  in  its  treatment  of 
mind.  Metal  processes,  according  to  pragmatism, 
have  arisen  as  aids  to  the  adjustment  of  organisms 
to  their  environment.  In  such  a  view  as  James's, 
truth  and  the  survival  value  that  behefs  possess  in 
the  biological  struggle  for  existence  are  made 
synonymous,  and  it  Is  just  this  that  constitutes  the 
pragmatic  fallacy.  It  might  be  argued  that,  ac- 
cording to  the  instrumental  theory  of  conscious- 
ness, no  false  beliefs,  but  only  true  beliefs,  i.  c, 
beliefs  that  correspond  with  reality,  can  be  of 
biological  utility^  through  their  Instrumentality  to 
the  adjustment  of  the  organism  to  its  environment; 
but  it  is  necessary  to  distinguish  here,  by  reference 
to  the  objects  of  the  two  classes  of  beliefs,  be- 


"See  G.  H.   Palmer,  The  Nature  of  Goodness. 

■'Biological  utility  or  instrumentality  is  a  case  of  value,  for 
what  is  instrumental  to  life  is  indirectly  the  object  of  inter- 
est or  desire,  since  life  is  valued  with  approximate  universal- 
ity. 


30        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

tween  what  I  shall  call  "scientific"  behefs  and 
"metaphysical"  beliefs.  "Scientific"  beliefs  are  be- 
liefs about  details  of  the  physical  environment. 
"Metaphysical"  beliefs  are  beliefs  about  the  na- 
ture of  the  universe  as  a  whole,  as  e.  g.,  the  belief 
that  the  surface  appearance  of  things  is  real,  or 
the  contrasting  belief  that  ultimate  reality  is  found 
only  beneath  the  surface  of  appearances.  The 
phenomenal  universe  is  not  a  "whole,"  so  if  there 
is  a  fundamental  unity  about  the  universe,  it  can  be 
found  only  in  some  transcendent  aspect  of  it.  Be- 
liefs in  transexperiential  realities  of  any  sort,  also, 
whether  or  not  there  be  a  unity  about  the  objects, 
would  be  called  "metaphysical"  beliefs.  Many 
religious  beliefs  are  of  this  sort.  "Scientific"  hypo- 
theses, if  they  are  of  any  significance,  are  capable 
of  empirical  verification  with  at  least  some  degree 
of  success;  while  "metaphysical"  beliefs,  as  I  have 
defined  them,  are  incapable  of  empirical  verifica- 
tion. The  beliefs  that  must  be  true  in  order  to  be 
valuable  in  the  long  run,  biologically  and  other- 
wise, are  the  ones  that  I  call  "scientific"  beliefs. 
For  example,  the  belief  that  the  ice  on  the  river  is 
safe  is  a  "scientific"  belief.  It  can  be  verified  by 
venturing  upon  the  ice.  Such  a  belief  as  this  pos- 
sesses biological  value  only  if  true,  for  to  believe 
that  the  ice  is  safe  when  in  reality  it  is  not  safe  may 
be  an  indirect  cause  of  death,  in  case  I  go  skating 


Pragmatic  Fallacy  and  False  Attribution    3 1 

and  am  drowned  as  a  consequence.  Beliefs  of  this 
"scientific"  sort  have  disvalue  unless  they  corre- 
spond with  outside  facts. 

The  case  of  "metaphysical"  behefs,  however,  is 
different.  "Metaphysical"  beliefs  can  not  be  veri- 
fied by  the  practical  process  of  discovering  the 
sense-data  that  constitute  the  objects  with  which 
the  propositions  correspond,  for  they  refer  to  no 
empirical  objects.  But  if  they  refer  to  no  em- 
pirical objects  that  can  serve  as  their  verification, 
neither  can  they  lead  to  objective  results  that  are 
harmful.  Holding  a  false  "metaphysical"  belief 
can  never  have  such  bad  objective  consequences  as 
holding  a  false  "scientific"  belief,  e.  g.,  a  false 
belief  about  the  condition  of  the  ice;  and  the  false 
"metaphysical"  belief  may,  on  the  other  hand, 
possess  positive  values  of  a  subjective  sort.  "Scien- 
tific" beliefs,  also,  whether  true  or  false,  may  have 
subjective  effects  of  value;  but,  in  the  case  of  false 
"scientific"  beliefs,  the  sum  total  of  subjective  and 
objective  effects  will  have  negative  value  in  the 
long  run.  An  error  believed  has  the  same  suh- 
jective  effect  upon  the  believer  as  a  truth  believed. 
Even  if  we  assumed  naturalism  to  be  the  true 
metaphysical  theory,  it  is  plain  that  the  (false) 
"tender-minded"  belief  in  God  would  possess  hy- 
gienic value  for  those  who  were  made  optimistic 
by  the  belief;  and  it  would  possess  moral  value  for 


32        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

those  who  would  not  be  moral  without  belief  in 
supernatural  sanctions.  In  the  case  of  "meta- 
physical" beliefs,  the  effect  is  of  a  subjective  sort, 
and  is  independent  of  the  objective  truth  of  the  be- 
liefs. A  man  in  a  naturalistic  universe  might  profit 
from  true  "scientific"  beliefs  about  the  parts  of 
the  universe,  and  also  from  the  emotional  and 
moral  effect  of  a  false  religious  belief  about  the 
nature  of  the  universe  as  a  whole,  its  meaning,  pur- 
pose, and  the  like.  Many  of  the  false  religious 
beliefs  of  primitive  man  have  had  negative  values 
so  far  as  they  have  actually  caused  maladjustment 
to  the  physical  environment  by  virtue  of  having 
"scientific"  beliefs  associated  with  them,  but  they 
have  possessed  numerous  positive  values,  through 
being  the  source  of  moral  instruction,  of  artistic 
production,  of  conceptions  of  law,  etc.  Much  con- 
fusion will  be  avoided  by  keeping  clear  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  direct,  subjective  effects  of 
"metaphysical"  beliefs,  and  the  indirect,  objective 
effects  of  "scientific"  beliefs.  To  believe  in  God, 
even  if  there  be  no  God,  can  have  no  bad  indirect, 
objective  effect.  On  the  other  hand,  the  direct, 
subjective  effects  of  religious  beliefs  upon  con- 
duct, happiness,  etc.,  may  be  of  such  positive  value 
as  to  be  a  determining  factor  in  the  biological 
struggle  for  existence. 


Pragmatic  Fallacy  and  False  Attribution    33 

In  The  Will  to  Believe^  James  emphasizes  the 
emotional  and  moral  necessity  of  some  sort  of 
theistic  belief  for  the  majority  of  people.  No 
other  sort  of  world-view,  he  says,  Is  congruent 
with  human  nature.  He  recognizes  in  this  early 
work,  too,  that  mere  congruity  with  man's  emo- 
tional nature  is  not  the  meaning  or  the  test  of 
truth.  He  says :  "Theism,  whatever  its  objective 
warrant,  would  thus  be  seen  to  have  a  subjective 
anchorage  In  its  congruity  with  our  nature  as 
thinkers ;  and,  however  it  may  fare  with  its  truth, 
to  derive  from  this  subjective  adequacy  the  strong- 
est possible  guaranty  of  its  permanency.  .  .  . 
God  may  be  called  the  normal  object  of  the  mind's 
belief.  Whether  over  and  above  this  He  be  really 
the  living  truth  is  another  question.  If  He  Is,  it 
will  show  the  structure  of  the  mind  to  be  In  ac- 
cordance with  the  nature  of  reality."^  Though 
James  here  avoids  the  pragmatic  fallacy  by  dis- 
tinguishing the  value  of  belief  from  its  truth,  his 
later  developments  of  pragmatism  obliterate  the 
distinction,  or  they  at  least  make  emotional  con- 
gruity sufficient  evidence  of  truth  in  cases  where 
verification  by  perception  and  consistency  is  im- 
possible or  inconclusive.  It  is  this  that  Professor 
Perry  refers  to  as  the  pragmatic  method  of  "ver- 


"Especially  in  Ch.  IV. 

*0p  cit.,  p.  116.    Italics  mine. 


34        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

ification  by  sentiment,"^  when  verification  proper 
is  impossible.  Since  truth  is  a  matter  of  logic  and 
epistemology,  the  extra-logical  matter  of  senti- 
ment should  not  be  admitted  as  a  test  of  truth. 
Let  us  content  ourselves  by  saying  that  unverifi- 
able  religious  beliefs  possess  value  or  disvalue, 
and  stop  at  this  point,  rather  than  confuse  matters 
of  psychology  and  theory  of  value  with  logic. 

That  James  did  not  keep  clear  in  his  later 
writings  on  pragmatism  the  distinction  between 
the  value  and  the  truth  of  belief  is  obvious,  not 
only  from  the  general  spirit  of  pragmatism,  but 
also  from  certain  definite  statements  that  he 
makes.* 

The  pragmatic  fallacy  extends  to  the  case  of 
mysticism  when  employed  as  James  employs  it  as 
evidence  for  the  truth  of  religious  belief.  James 
concludes"  that  "personal  religious  experience  has 
its  root  and  centre  in  mystical  states  of  conscious- 
ness." Furthermore,  it  is  largely,  if  not  wholly, 
because  of  the  value  possessed  by  mystical  states 
for  the  mystics  themselves  that  James  accepts  mys- 
ticism as  evidence  of  the  truth  of  religion.  A  few 
quotations  from  James  will  make  clear  his  posi- 
tion.    He  says  '^°    "Mystical  states  indeed  wield 


^Present  Philosophical  Tendencies,  pp.  209,  10. 
'See  Pragmatism,  pp.  77,  204,  222,  273. 
"Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  379. 
^"Ibid.,  pp.  428,  413  (italics  mine),  400,  401. 


Pragmatic  Fallacy  and  False  Attribution    35 

no  authority  due  simply  to  their  being  mystical 
states."  "To  pass  a  spiritual  judgment  upon  these 
states,  we  must  .  .  .  inquire  into  their  fruits  for 
life."  "The  Vedantists  says  that  one  may  stumble 
into  superconsciousness  sporadically,  without  the 
previous  training,  but  then  it  is  impure.  Their 
test  of  its  purity,  like  our  test  of  religious  value 
[=  truth,  as  I  have  pointed  out,  for  the  prag- 
matist],  is  empirical:  its  fruits  must  be  good  for 
life.  When  a  man  comes  out  of  Samadhi,  they 
assure  us  that  he  remains  'enlightened,  a  sage,  a 
prophet,  a  saint,  his  whole  character  changed,  his 
life  changed,  illumined.'  "  If  mystical  states  have 
"no  authority  due  to  their  being  mystical  states," 
and  if  it  is  only  because  of  their  value  that  they 
are  accepted  as  evidence  for  the  truth  of  the  re- 
ligious beliefs  associated  with  them,  or  in  terms  of 
which  they  are  interpreted  by  the  mystics  them- 
selves, then  here  is  another  clear  case  of  the  prag- 
matic fallacy. 

II 

The  question  of  the  interpretation  of  mysticism 
leads  up  to  the  fallacy  that  I  have  called  the  fallacy 
of  false  attribution^  which  consists  in  the  erroneous 
interpretation  of  an  experience  whereby  the  experi- 
ence is  attributed  to  an  external,  divine  source  in 
cases  where  a  physiological  explanation  is  adequate 


36        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

to  account  for  the  experience.  Thus  James  says  that 
the  "inner"  experiences,  mystical  in  nature,  which 
are  central  in  religion,  point  to  the  intervention  of 
superhuman  powers.  But  it  is  possible  that  mysti- 
cism is  only  a  form  of  emotionalism,  explainable 
within  a  purely  naturalistic  scheme.  Postponing 
for  the  moment  a  more  thorough  examination  of 
mysticism,  I  will  simply  say  that  if  mysticism  is 
only  a  form  of  emotionalism,  then  the  mystic, 
though  indubitably  passing  through  the  experience, 
errs  in  ascribing  to  it  a  divine  significance  that 
does  not  belong  to  it.  This  is  the  fallacy  of  false 
attribution. 

As  Professor  Hocking  says,  "To  distinguish 
between  what  is  subjective  and  what  is  objective 
about  our  experience  is  frequently  difficult,  even  in 
physical  observation;  but  especially  in  the  experi- 
ence of  the  mystic.""  The  difficulty  of  distinguish- 
ing subjective  from  objective  aspects  of  any  ex- 
perience that  occurs  when  one  is  in  an  unusual 
physiological  condition  is  well  illustrated  in  Kip- 
ling's "La  Nuit  Blanche."  Here  a  man  with  the 
"jims"  on  has  remarkable  experiences.    He  says: 

"In  the  full,  fresh,  fragrant  morning, 

I  observed  a  camel  crawl. 
Laws  of  gravitation  scorning, 

On  the  ceiling  and  the  wall." 

This  is  only  one  of  his  spectacular  experiences. 


^The  meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  pp.  352,  353. 


Pragmatic  Fallacy  and  False  Attribution    37 

He  himself  pertinently  raises  the  question  of  the 
real  objectivity  of  events  in  which  the  natural 
order  of  things  is  so  upset,  for  he  asks : 

"Was  it  earthquake  or  tobacco, 
Day  of  doom  or  night  of  drink?" 

The  truth  of  a  belief  is  tested  by  seeking  the 
object  believed  in.  If  the  mystic  defined  God  as 
the  mystical  experience  itself,  then  the  truth  of  the 
belief  in  God  would  be  established  when  the  ex- 
perience was  obtained.  But  God,  for  the  mystic, 
is  not  the  mystical  experience  itself.  That  is,  God 
is  not  the  experiencing,  but  the  experienced.  God 
is  believed  by  the  mystic  to  be  real  outside  of  the 
occasional  mystical  experiences,  and  to  reveal  him- 
self in  the  experiences.  God  is  believed  to  be,  not 
the  experience,  but  the  giver  of  the  experience, 
which  is  interpreted  as  an  experience  of  union  with 
God.  There  is  attribution  of  the  experience  to  a 
supernatural  source.  Without  such  attribution, 
the  experience  is  not  called  a  religious  experience. 

James  argues  quite  unsoundly  that  the  question 
of  the  origin  of  an  experience  is  irrelevant.  He 
says,  "The  plain  truth  is  that  to  interpret  rehgion 
one  must  in  the  end  look  at  the  immediate  content 
of  the  religious  consciousness."^^  I  would  fully 
agree  with  this,  since  one  essential  component  of 
the  religious  consciousness  is  the  belief  in  some- 


'^Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  12,  note. 


38        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

thing  superhuman,  but  since  such  a  belief  is  neces- 
sarily present  in  every  religious  experience,"  the 
question  of  the  natural  or  supernatural  origin  of 
the  emotional  components  of  the  experience  is  very 
relevant  indeed. 

James's  whole  argument  against  the  validity  of 
attaching  any  significance  to  the  connection  between 
religion  and  sex  is  rather  weak.  It  is  not  because 
"language  drawn  from  the  sexual  life""  is  com- 
mon in  rehgious  literature  that  the  psychologist 
interprets  religion  in  terms  of  sublimation  of  sex. 
Much  of  religious  literature  is  unreliable  as  scien- 
tific psychological  evidence.  This  is  shown  by  the 
fact,  as  James  points  out,  that  religion  has  often 
been  described  in  terms  of  other  instincts,  more 
or  less  irrelevant.  But  it  is  just  because  religion 
is  actually  observed  by  modern  psychologists  to  be 
correlated  with  sexual  phenomena  that  a  sexual 
origin  is  frequently  ascribed  to  it. 

What  James  really  seems  to  be  arguing  for  is 
the  irrelevance,  so  far  as  truth  and  falsity  are  con- 
cerned, of  ascribing  to  an  experience  a  patholog- 
ical, as  opposed  to  a  normal,  physiological  origin. 
He  admits  my  contention  that  the  question  of 
physiological  origin  is  relevant  when  "supernatural 


"In  the  case  of  the  mystical  experience  there  is  present,  at 
least  after  the  experience,  the  belief  that  an  objective  God 
was  revealed. 

"James  op  cit.,  p.  11,  note. 


Pragmatic  Fallacy  and  False  Attribution    39 

origin  is  pleaded  by  the  other  side."^^  In  the  case 
of  the  religious  experience,  there  is  belief  in  a 
supernatural  origin,  as  James  himself  insists.  So 
in  reality  there  is  little  disagreement  in  the  last 
analysis  between  the  views  of  James  and  the  point 
that  I  am  insisting  on.  James  would  admit  the 
fallacy  of  false  attribution  when  the  question  is  one 
of  attributing  an  experience  to  a  supernatural 
source,  by  the  one  who  has  the  experience,  if 
psychologists  can  establish  the  physiological  origin 
of  the  experience. 

Mysticism  may  be  identified  with  the  meta- 
physical system  that  asserts  the  unity,  timelessness, 
immediacy,  and  ineffableness  of  reality,  together 
with  the  denial  of  reality  to  the  phenomenal  world. 
Royce  defines  it  thus,  and  proceeds  to  refute  \t}^ 
Professor  Hocking  accepts"  Royce's  refutation, 
but  says  that  mysticism  has  been  historically  a 
much  broader  thing  than  the  metaphysical  system 
that  Royce  refutes.  Professor  Hocking  says,  "The 
agreement  of  the  mystics  lies  in  that  fact,  prior  to 
doctrine,  and  wholly  coextensive  with  religion,  the 
practice  of  union  with  God  in  a  special  act  of  wor- 
ship."^* But  here  is  the  rub.  Here  the  whole 
question  at  issue  is  stated,  in  contradictory  form. 


^'Ibid.,  p.  19.     See  also  p.  520. 
^"The  World  and  the  Individual,  Vol.  I,  Ch.  II. 
"The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  p.  351, 
'^Jbid.,  p.  352. 


40        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

"The  practice  of  union  with  God  in  a  special  act 
of  worship"  is  not  a  "fact,  prior  to  doctrine,"  as 
Professor  Hocking  says  it  is.  It  is  rather  the  doc- 
trinal interpretation  of  a  fact.  The  fact  is  the  ex- 
periencing. The  doctrine  is,  that  something  ob- 
jective, God,  is  experienced. 

I  would  agree  that  the  mystic's  worship  is  an  at- 
tempt to  gain  what  the  worshipper  believes  is 
union  with  God;  but,  so  long  as  science  and  scien- 
tific methods  are  accepted,  there  is  a  presumption 
against  the  truth  of  the  belief.  The  mystic  com- 
mits the  fallacy  of  false  attribution.  The  source 
of  his  experience  is  "within"  and  not  "without." 
The  experience  is  a  form  of  emotionalism,  which 
consists  of  visceral  reverberations  and  the  activity 
of  the  sympathetic  nervous  system. 

Professor  Leuba  has  made  a  psychological 
study  of  mysticism, ^^  and  his  conclusion  is  that 
mysticism  is, to  a  large  extent,  a  form  of  sublimated 
love.  This  is  the  conclusion  of  the  Freudians. 
Professor  Coe  gives  a  good  criticism  of  mysti- 
cism.^°  He  denies  that  anything  objective  is  re- 
vealed in  the  mystical  experience  itself,  and  says 
that  the  objective  factor  is  added  when  the  experi- 
ence is  interpreted.     The  cause  of  the  interpreta- 


"See  "On  the  Psychology  of  a  Group  of  Christian  Mystics,' 
Mind,  N.  S.,  Vol.  XIV  (1905),  PP-  iS-27. 

'"G.  A.  Coe,  "The  Sources  of  the  Mystical  Revelation,' 
The  Hibbert  Journal,  Vol.  VI   (1907-08),  pp.  359-372. 


Pragmatic  Fallacy  and  False  Attribution    41 

tion  made  does  not  reside  In  the  nature  of  the  ex- 
perience itself ;  but  "tradition  and  instruction,  auto- 
suggestion grown  habitual,  and  reflective  analy- 
sis,"^^  determine  the  interpretation  of  the  mystical 
experience  as  a  revelation  of  God.  "The  mystic 
brings  his  theological  bcUefs  to  the  mystical  ex- 
perience; he  does  not  derive  them  from  it."^^ 

Though  the  half-way  mysticism  of  most  mystics 
is  inadequate,  and  involves  the  fallacy  of  false 
attribution,  it  is  still  possible  that  there  may  be  a 
mystical  solution  of  the  religious  problem.  So 
long  as  any  recognition  is  given  to  phenomenal 
reality  and  to  the  world  that  the  sciences  study, 
mysticism  must  be  regarded  as  emotionalism  only, 
with  a  false  belief  as  to  the  source  of  the  emotion; 
but  a  complete  metaphysical  mysticism,  such  as 
Royce  expounds  and  refutes,  may  still  be  the  truest 
insight,  and  farthest  from  a  final  refutation. 
Thoroughgoing  mysticism  is  at  least  wonderfully 
attractive,  occasionally  for  all  reflective  persons, 
and  always  for  a  few;  and  it  will  continue  to  lure 
world-weary  souls  to  the  promised  rest  and  peace 
of  its  Nirvana. ^^ 


'^Ibid.,  p.  367. 

''Ibid.,  p.  367. 

"For  a  further  discussion  of  the  fallacy  of  false  attribution, 
see  the  author's  article,  "The  fallacy  in  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells's 
'New  Religion,'"  in  the  Monist,  Vol.  XXVIII  (1918),  pp. 
604-08. 


CHAPTER  III 

A   CLASSIFICATION  OF  RELIGIOUS  VALUES^ 

IN  an  article  in  the  Journal  of  Philosophy, 
Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods^  I  pointed 
out  two  fallacies  that  are  met  with  frequently  in 
works  in  the  philosophy  of  religion,  fallacies  that 
I  have  called  the  pragmatic  fallacy  and  the  fallacy 
of  false  attribution.  Professor  Brightman,^  Pro- 
fessor Moore, ^  and  Dr.  Schiller^  have  presented 
criticisms  of  my  views.  In  answering  these  criti- 
cisms I  shall  be  led  into  a  somewhat  detailed  dis- 
cussion of  religious  values  from  the  point  of  view 
of  a  behaviorist.  The  views  of  one  who  speaks  of 
the  meaning  and  value  of  God  in  human  behavior 
are  apt  to  be  misunderstood,  since  religion  is  a 
field  into  which  behaviorism  has  not  as  yet  ven- 
tured far.     However,  since  this  is  a  direction  in 


^Reprinted,  with  slight  changes  and  additions,  from  the 
Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods, 
Vol.  XV  (1918),  pp.  488-99,  where  the  article  appeared  under 
the  title,  "On  Religious  Values:   A  Rejoinder." 

*Vol.  XIV,  pp.  653-660.  This  article  is  reprinted  above  as 
Chapter  II. 

^Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Scientific  Meth- 
ods, Vol.  XV,  pp.  71-76. 

*Ibid.,  pp.  76-78. 

^Ibid.,  pp.  505-515.  In  the  following  chapter  I  take  account 
of  Dr.  Schiller's  criticism. 

42 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values        43 

which  study  will  prove  fruitful,  I  shall  offer  a 
classification  of  religious  values,  which  will  make 
clearer  what  would  be  an  objective,  behavioristic 
account  of  religious  values,  and  which  will  also  be 
a  part  of  my  answer  to  my  critics. 

I 

The  pragmatic  fallacy  in  the  philosophy  of  re- 
ligion, as  I  have  defined  it,  consists  of  the  identi- 
fication of  the  value  with  the  truth  of  religious 
beliefs,  and  of  the  acceptance  of  those  religious  be- 
liefs as  true  which  are  found  to  have  value.  I 
have  insisted  that  the  concepts  of  truth  and  of 
value  can  not  be  identified.  I  have  pointed  out 
especially  that  the  survival  value  of  religious  be- 
liefs in  human  evolution  is  no  evidence  for  the 
truth  of  the  beliefs,  contrary  to  the  view  of  James, 
who  was  the  first  to  employ  Darwinism  in  defense 
of  religious  truth.  Further  discussion  of  the 
meaning  of  value  is  obviously  needed,  but  I  pre- 
supposed among  the  readers  of  my  article  a  suffi- 
cient familiarity  with  the  developments  in  the 
theory  of  value  from  the  work  of  Meinong''  and  of 
Ehrenfels^  to  recent  discussions  to  obviate  such 


"A.  Meinong,  Psychologisch-Ethische  Untersuchun-gen  sur 
Weriiheorie,  Graz,  1894. 

'C.  von  Ehrenfels,  System  der  Werttheorie,  2  vols.,  Leipzig, 
1897. 


44        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

misinterpretations  as  have  been  made  of  my  state- 
ments by  Professor  Brightman. 

Though  the  pragmatic  fallacy  m2iy  be  maintained 
equally  well  in  connection  with  other  theories 
of  value,  the  theory  which  I  accept,  as  I  suggest- 
ed in  my  original  article,  is  one  which  defines  value 
in  terms  of  organic  attitudes  and  acts,  in  terms  of 
liking  and  desiring;  and  liking  and  desiring  may 
be  most  adequately  treated  in  behavioristic  terms. 
An  object  possesses  value  if  some  organism  has  an 
interest  in  it;  and  to  have  an  interest  in  an  object 
means  to  act  in  such  a  way  as  to  try  to  get  posses- 
sion of  it  (or  retain  it  if  already  possessed),  or  at 
least  to  enjoy  it,  as  in  the  case  of  esthetic  values. 
Since  interests  and  likes  and  dislikes  have  meaning 
only  in  terms  of  behavior,  value  may  ultimately  be 
defined  in  terms  of  reactions  or  responses,  positive 
or  negative.  Positive  response  constitutes  posi- 
tive value  (the  good,  the  desirable,  etc.),  and  neg- 
ative response  constitutes  negative  value  (the  bad, 
the  undesirable,  etc.). 

But  value  is  not  so  simple  and  obvious  a  thing 
as  such  a  definition  might  seem  to  imply.  There 
are  various  types  and  classes  of  values  all  coming 
within  this  one  definition.  I  might  have  presup- 
posed that  my  readers  would  be  familiar  with  the 
common  distinction  between  independent,  or  im- 
mediate, values,  attaching  to  objects  valued  for 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values        45 

their  own  sake,  as  ends,  and  dependent,  or  instru- 
mental, or  derived,  values,  attaching  to  objects 
only  when  such  objects  are  instrumental  to  other 
objects  possessing  independent  values.  Instru- 
mental values  are  "derived"  from  the  relation  of 
the  objects  to  other  objects  directly  valued.  An 
instrumental  value  may  thus  be  only  indirectly  the 
object  of  interest.  Though  I  might  have  presup- 
posed familiarity  with  such  a  distinction  between 
independent  and  dependent  values,  I  was  careful 
to  state  that  biological  utility  is  a  case  of  what  I 
have  here  called  instrumental  value,  not  ,  inde- 
pendent, since  an  object  that  possesses  biological 
utility,  i.  e.,  one  that  is  instrumental  to  the  preser- 
vation of  life,  "is  indirectly  the  object  of  interest 
or  desire,  since  life  is  valued  with  approximate 
universality."  But  Professor  Brightman  over- 
looked my  statement  of  this  distinction,  and  tries 
to  make  out  that  I  have  presented  two  definitions 
of  value,  a  psychological  and  a  biological  one.* 
My  single  definition  is,  rather,  a  psycho-biological 
one,  and  allows  for  the  distinction  between  inde- 
pendent and  dependent  values.  The  classification 
which  I  shall  present  a  little  later  will  make  my 
position  clearer. 

Professor  Brightman  makes  two  confusions  of 
the  issue  when  he  refers  to  my  distinction  between 

'Loc.  cit.,  p.  72. 


46        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

what  I  called  "scientific"  and  "metaphysical"  be- 
liefs. I  said  that  "scientific"  beliefs,  referring 
to  details  of  the  physical  environment  and  capable 
of  empirical  verification,  must  be  true  in  order  to 
be  valuable.  I  cited  the  case  of  belief  in  the 
safety  of  the  ice  as  an  example.  Professor  Bright- 
man,®  in  the  first  place,  confuses  the  belief  in  the 
safety  of  the  ice  (the  belief  is  a  psychological 
entity — ultimately  a  behavioristic  fact)  and  the 
ice  itself.  I  spoke,  not  about  the  value  of  the  ice, 
but  only  about  the  value  of  the  belief  in  the  safety 
of  the  ice.  Whether  or  not  the  small  boy  likes  the 
ice  itself  is  an  extraneous  matter.  In  the  second 
place,  as  I  pointed  out,  it  is  the  indirect  or  instru- 
mental value  of  the  belief  (its  instrumentality  in 
relation  to  survival,  survival  being  directly  de- 
sired) that  is  in  question,  not  its  independent 
value  as  the  direct  object  of  desire,  as  Professor 
Brightman  seems  to  think,^"  So  whether  or  not 
the  small  boy  likes  to  believe  in  the  safety  of  the 
ice  is  also  an  extraneous  matter.  The  actual  in- 
strumentality of  the  belief  is  the  important  thing. 
As  a  result  of  these  two  confusions,  Professor 
Brightman's  criticism  of  my  statement  of  the 
pragmatic  fallacy  falls  down.  When  he  concludes 
that  he  has  reduced  my  pragmatic  fallacy  to  "the 


•See  loc.  cit.,  pp.  71,  72. 
"Loc.  cit.,  p,  72, 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values        47 

argument  that  a  belief  is  true  because  we  desire 
it  to  be  true,""  he  shows  his  entire  failure  to  take 
into  account  the  distinction  between  independent 
and  dependent  values.  The  chief  error  of  some 
pragmatists  when  dealing  with  the  philosophy  of 
religion,  and  of  James  especially,  has  been  in 
maintaining  that  religious  beliefs  possessing  sur- 
vival value  thereby  demonstrate  their  truth.  Such 
beliefs  may  or  may  not  be  true.  Nothing  can  be 
inferred  from  their  survival  value  as  to  their 
truth.  To  maintain  that  survival  value  of  reli- 
gious beliefs  is  evidence  of  their  truth  is  to  commit 
the  pragmatic  fallacy. 

Professor  Moore  objects  to  my  distinction  be- 
tween "metaphysical"  and  "scientific"  beliefs.  He 
says"  that  even  false  "scientific"  beliefs  may  be 
subjectively  valuable,  as  in  the  case  of  belief  in 
the  non-existence  of  pain,  while  being  objective- 
ly harmful  through  hindering  the  cure  of  the 
disease.  This  is  all  very  true,  and  does  nothing 
to  invalidate  the  distinction  that  I  made.  It  helps 
to  confirm  it  instead.  The  fact  is,  as  Professor 
Moore  points  out  in  this  example,  that  "scientific" 
beliefs  do  have  objective  effects,  and  hence  must 
be  true  if,  in  the  long  run,  they  are  to  possess  a 
balance  of  positive  value.     "Metaphysical"   be- 


"Loc.  cit.,  p.  72. 
"Loc.  cit.,  p.  77. 


48        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

liefs,  on  the  other  hand,  as  I  defined  them,  can  not 
have  objective  effects  to  counterbalance  any 
subjective  effects  of  positive  value  that  they  may 
have.  Professor  Moore  does  not  deny  this,  but 
simply  claims  that  they  may  have  harmful  effects 
on  "the  spiritual  nature."  This  is  beside  the  point 
when  the  case  is  being  argued  on  the  biological 
grounds  of  pragmatism,  for  "the  spiritual  na- 
ture," in  Professor  Moore's  sense  of  the  term, 
does  not  count  as  a  factor  of  biological  significance 
in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

It  is  necessary  to  make  the  distinction  that  I  did 
between  "scientific"  and  "metaphysical"  beliefs  or 
else,  from  the  premises  of  the  instrumentalist,  it 
would  follow  that  all  beliefs  that  survive  would  be 
true,  and  that  survival  would  be  the  test  of  truth. 
I  pointed  out  that  some  beliefs,  which  I  called 
"metaphysical,"  in  that  they  do  not  refer  to  the 
physical  environment,  may  possess  a  subjective" 
value  even  if  not  objectively  true,  and  may  prevail 
and  survive  because  of  this  subjective  value,  while 
false  "scientific"  beliefs  lead  in  the  end  to  bad 
objective  results  that  destroy  the  beliefs. 

II 

Having  defined  value  in  its  generic  sense  in 


"For  behaviorism  the  term  "subjective"  lacks  its  usual  con- 
notation. It  has  a  legitmate  use  and  meaning,  however,  refer- 
ring to  one  phase  of  the  objective  mental  processes. 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values        49 

terms  of  interest  or  desire,  it  remains  for  us  to 
differentiate  religious  values  from  other  values, 
such  as  ethical,  economic,  and  esthetic  values,  and 
then  to  classify  the  religious  values.  Religious 
values  may  be  differentiated  from  the  values  dealt 
with  by  the  other  value  sciences  by  reference  to 
the  objects  to  which  they  are  said  to  attach,  i.  e., 
to  the  supernatural  objects  of  belief,  to  the  acts 
of  worship  that  such  belief  leads  to,  and  especially 
to  the  beliefs  themselves,  regarded  as  psycholog- 
ical objects,  and  to  emotional  states  associated 
with  the  beliefs. 

The  distinction  between  immediate  and  instru- 
mental values,  and  that  between  real  and  ideal 
values,  are  the  chief  ones  to  be  pointed  out  in  a 
classification  of  religious  values.  Immediate  and 
instrumental  values  have  already  been  defined. 
Ideal  values  are  those  which  we  predicate  of  ob- 
jects which  are  not  real,  but  which  depend  for  their 
existence  on  the  valuing  subject,  being  "invoked  by 
an  interest  and  held  in  existence  only  by  the  act  of 
imagination."^*  Real  value-objects,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  objects  that  exist  independently  of  the 
interested  subject.  They  are  facts,  while  ideal 
value-objects  are  fancies. 

My  classification  of  religious  values,  which  fol- 


"R.    B.    Perry,    "Religious    Values,"    American   Journal   of 
Theology,  Vol.  XIX  (1915),  P-  3- 


50        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

lows,  is  in  general  agreement  with  one  already 
made  by  Professor  Perry,"  but  I  have  made  sev- 
eral added  distinctions  to  allow  for  cases  of  value 
that  could  not  otherwise  be  provided  for. 

Instrumental  values  are  of  importance  in  the 
study  of  value,  especially  in  the  case  of  religious 
values.  There  are  several  distinguishable  sorts  of 
instrumental  values.  The  mere  causal  connection 
between  two  objects,  one  of  which  is  directly 
valued,  is  one  case.  I  refer  by  this  to  the  relation 
oi  A  to  B  when  A  is  the  condition  of  5's  occur- 
rence or  existence.  A  second  case  is  that  involving 
the  judgment  that  A  is  the  condition  of  B,  when  the 
judgment  is  true.  A  third  case  is  that  in  which 
there  occurs  the  judgment  that  A  is  the  condition 
of  B,  when  the  judgment  is  false,  though  A  is  real. 
A  fourth  case  involves  the  judgment  that  A  is  the 
condition  of  B  when  A  is  unreal,  though  believed 
real,  but  such  that  the  judgment  would  be  true  if  A 
existed.  A  fifth  case  is  that  involving  the  judgment 
that  A  is  the  condition  of  B  when  A  is  unreal,  and 
when  the  judgment  would  be  false  even  if  A  ex- 
isted. 

In  these  five  cases  we  find,  first,  the  distinction 
between  actual  causal  connection  and  the  judgment 
of,  or  belief  in,  such  connection;  second,  the  dis- 
tinction  between    true    and    false   judgments    of 

"Z-oc,  cit.,  pp.  iff, 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values        51 

causal  connection  when  truth  and  falsity  depend 
upon  the  reality  or  unreality  of  the  causal  connec- 
tion; and,  third,  the  distinction  between  true  and 
false  judgments  of  causal  connection  when  truth 
and  falsity  depend  upon  the  existence  or  non- 
existence of  A.  A  combination  of  the  second  and 
third  cases  occurs  when  A  is  valued  because  judged 
instrumental  to  B,  and  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  A 
is  unreal,  and  when,  further,  the  relation  of  in- 
strumentality could  not  hold  even  if  A  existed. 

The  mere  relation  of  causality  or  instrumen- 
tality in  itself  does  not  constitute  value  i^"  but  we 
may  say  that  an  object  has  value  if  it  is  actually 
instrumental  to  a  valued  object,  even  though  the 
instrumentality  is  not  recognized.  If  A  is  actually 
instrumental  to  B,  and  if  B  is  the  object  of  desire, 
then  it  is  permissible  to  say  that  A  has  conditional, 
instrumental  value.  The  biological  value  of  many 
religious  beliefs  is  of  this  sort.  In  such  a  case  the 
object  A  is  not  the  object  of  an  actual  interest,  but 
it  would  be  desired  if  its  instrumentality  to  B, 
which  is  desired,  were  recognized. 

All  of  the  above  distinctions  are  provided  for  in 
the  three  following  tables : 


"See  W.  T.  Bush,  "Value  and  Causality,"  Journal  of  Phil- 
osophy, Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods,  VqI.  XV,  pp. 
85-96. 


52        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

I.  Real  Values  (attaching  to  objects  that  exist). 

1.  Immediate,  or  independent   (attaching  to  ob- 

jects valued  directly). 

2.  Instrumental,  or  dependent. 

A.  Conditional    (when   real   instrumentality 

exists,  but  is  not  recognized). 

B.  Actual    (when    instrumentality   is    recog- 

nized). 

a.  True  (when  valuing  of  object  is  me- 

diated by  a  true  judgment  of  in- 
strumentality). 

b.  False    (when   mediated   by   a    false 

judgment). 

What  I  call  "conditional,  instrumental  values" 
are  in  all  cases  actually  instrumental,  by  definition. 
They  are  not  actual  values,  however,  because  not 
valued  in  the  absence  of  a  judgment  of  instru- 
mentality, which  is  required  to  convert  a  mere  dis- 
position into  an  actual  valuing  act.  What  I  call 
"actual,  instrumental  values"  may  not  be  actually 
instrumental  in  all  cases;  but  if  judged  to  be  in- 
strumental, whether  truly  or  falsely,  they  then 
have  actual  value  because  actually  desired. 

A  second  table,  of  ideal  values,  would  be  as 
follows : 

II.  Ideal  Values  (attaching  to  objects  that  are 

not  real) . 
I.  Immediate,  or  independent. 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values        53 

2.   Instrumental,  or  dependent. 

A.  Conditional  (lacking,  for  what  does  not 

exist  can  not  be  the  cause  of  anything) . 

B.  Actual. 

a.  True   (lacking,  for  there  can  be  no 

true  judgment  of  instrumentality 
when  the  instrument  does  not 
exist). 

b.  False  (the  only  case  of  instrumental 

ideal  values) . 

In  the  case  of  a  false,  actual,  instrumental,  ideal 
value,  the  object  is  actually  valuable  because  it  is 
(i)  believed  real  (falsely),  (2)  judged  instru- 
mental (falsely),  and  (3)  actually  valued  because 
so  judged. 

A  third  table,  of  the  real  values  of  belief,  is 
necessary.  For  behaviorism  belief  is  a  positive 
reaction  to  a  proposition,  and  disbelief  is  a  nega- 
tive reaction.  Belief  in  God,  for  example,  is  an 
acceptance  of,  or  a  positive  organic  attitude  to- 
wards, the  proposition,  God  exists.  Disbelief  is  a 
rejection  of,  or  a  negative  attitude  towards, 
the  proposition.  Beliefs  are  psychological, 
i.  e.,  behavioristic,  entities,  and  proposi- 
tions are  not.  Strictly,  when  such  a  dis- 
tinction is  made,  it  is  only  propositions  that  may 
be  true  or  false,  while  beliefs  are  only  positive  or 
negative.     But  common  usage  justifies  one  in  call- 


54        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

ing  a  belief  in  a  true  proposition  a  true  belief,  and 
a  belief  in  a  false  proposition  a  false  belief.  Fur- 
thermore, disbelief  in  a  true  proposition  would  be 
the  equivalent  of  a  false  belief,  though  disbelief 
in  a  false  proposition  might,  or  might  not,  be  the 
equivalent  of  a  true  belief.  For  the  purposes  of 
the  theory  of  knowledge,  the  terms  "belief"  and 
"judgment"  are  practically  interchangeable.  In 
the  philosophy  of  religion,  however,  I  prefer  the 
term  "belief,"  since  it  suggests  a  more  permanent 
and  stable  reaction  of  the  organism. 

In  the  case  of  objects  merely  imagined,  but  be- 
lieved to  be  real,  the  objects  of  belief  are  unreal, 
but  the  beliefs  themselves,  as  psychological  sub- 
ject-matter, are  real.  So  there  would  be  a  third 
table  of  real  values,  like  the  first  table  except  for 
the  limitation  of  the  objects  to  beliefs  themselves : 

III.     Real  Values  of  Belief 

1.  Immediate,    or    independent    (when    one    be- 

lieves,  and  likes  to  believe,  just  for  the 
sake  of  believing,  if  there  be  such  a  case). 

2.  Instrumental,  or  dependent. 

A.  Conditional. 

B.  Actual. 

a.  True. 

b.  False. 

These  tables  of  values  may  be  further  cluci- 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values         55 

dated  through  application  to  the  chief  religious 
objects  in  the  higher  religions.  According  to 
James's  psychological  study  of  the  actual  religious 
experiences  of  individuals  of  strongly  marked  re- 
ligious character,"  the  chief  objects  of  religious 
interest  and  belief  in  the  higher  forms  of  religion 
are  the  following  four :  ( i )  God,  as  a  more  or 
less  personal  being;  (2)  human  souls  as  real  and 
significant;  (3)  the  permanent  significance  of  the 
human  soul,  i.  e.,  personal  immortality;  and  (4) 
freedom  (though  not,  to  be  sure,  in  all  forms  of 
the  higher,  redemptive  religions),  or  rather  inde- 
terminism,  since  the  term  "freedom,"  from  its 
philosophical  associations,  means,  according  to 
James,  "soft  determinism,"^^  which  is  still  genuine 
determinism  even  though  "softened"  by  its  ideal- 
istic setting. 

God  is  the  chief  object  of  belief  in  most  forms 
of  the  higher  religions.  Buddhism  is  no  excep- 
tion, for  in  actual  practice  Buddhism  is  not  athe- 
istic, the  Buddha  himself  being  deified;  and  in  the 
more  philosophical  form  of  Buddhism  the  law  of 
Karma,  which  is  the  moral  order  of  the  universe, 
would   pass    for   a  god.      ''Some    outward    real- 


"See  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  and  The  Will 
to  Believe. 

^'See  Ch.  V,  "The  Dilemma  of  Determinism,"  in  The  Will 
to  Believe. 


56        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

ity,"  James  says,"  "of  a  nature  defined  as  God's 
nature  must  be  defined,  is  the  only  ultimate  object 
that  is  at  the  same  time  rational  and  possible  for 
the  human  mind's  contemplation."  As  to  the  na- 
ture of  God,  James  say:  "It  is  essential  that  God 
be  conceived  as  the  deepest  power  in  the  universe; 
and,  second,  he  must  be  conceived  under  the  form 
of  mental  personality,  .  .  .  God's  personality  is  to 
be  regarded,  like  any  other  personality,  as  some- 
thing lying  outside  of  my  own  and  other  than  me, 
whose  existence  I  simply  come  upon  and  find.  A 
power  not  ourselves,  then,  which  not  only  makes 
for  righteousness,  but  means  it,  and  which  recog- 
nizes us,"^°  God,  regarded  as  a  personality,  is 
obviously  desired  as  an  end,  like  a  human  person- 
ality, and  not  merely  as  a  means.  In  the  higher 
religions  God  is  actually  so  regarded,  though  no 
counterpart  of  this  is  discoverable  in  the  lower, 
nature  religions. 

God  would,  however,  if  he  existed,  be  also  a 
means  to  other  ends.  He  would  guarantee  the 
realization  of  the  highest  human  ideals.  First  of 
all,  he  would  guarantee  personal  immortality, 
which,  according  to  James,  "is  one  of  the  great 
spiritual  needs  of  man."-^  "The  difference  in 
natural  'fact'  which  most  of  us  would  assign  as 


*The  Will  to  Believe,  pp.  115,  116. 

"Ibid.,  p.  122. 

'^Human  Immortality,  p.  2. 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values        57 

the  first  difference  which  the  existence  of  a  God 
ought  to  make  would,  I  imagine,  be  personal  im- 
mortality. Religion,  in  fact,  for  the  great  major- 
ity of  our  own  race  means  immortality,  and  noth- 
ing else.  God  is  the  producer  of  immortality;  and 
whoever  has  doubts  of  immortality  is  written 
down  as  an  atheist  without  further  trial. "-^ 

The  human  soul  is  an  object  of  vital  concern  in 
most  forms  of  the  redemptive  religions.  For  ex- 
ample, in  orthodox  Christianity  it  is  the  sinful 
soul  that  needs  salvation,  and  the  Buddhist  salva- 
tion from  rebirth  is  meaningless  unless  there  is  a 
soul  that  is  reincarnated,  though  Buddhism  tries 
to  deny  the  reality  of  the  soul  while  still  believing 
in  reincarnation. 

Although  a  belief  in  and  a  desire  for  indeter- 
minism  are  not  universal  in  the  higher  forms  of 
religion,  James  classes  indeterminism  among 
man's  "spiritual"  needs.  It  enhances  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  self.  The  mechanical  chain  of  events 
in  a  naturalistic  scheme,  which  denies  individual 
initiative,  fails  to  satisfy,  according  to  James,  the 
actual  desires  of  most  persons.  The  "soft  deter- 
minism" of  monistic  idealism  also  denies  any  real 
individual  creativeness  in  the  act  of  choice.  For 
absolute  idealism,  "our  wills  are  [not]  ours,  to 
make  them  Thine;"   they  are  only  "Thine."     Plu- 


*The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  524. 


58        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

ralistic  idealism  of  some  sort  would  seem  to  be 
what  the  majority  of  the  religious  portion  of  hu- 
manity desires.  There  is  a  prominent  exception, 
Calvinism,  which  denies  indeterminism;  but  James 
speaks  of  the  unsatisfactory  character  of  Calvin- 
istic  doctrine  for  most  religious  persons,  and  says, 
"A  God  who  gives  so  little  scope  to  love,  a  pre- 
destination which  takes  from  all  endeavor  all  its 
zest  with  all  its  fruit,  are  irrational  conceptions, 
because  they  say  to  our  most  cherished  powers, 
There  is  no  object  for  you.""^ 

It  now  remains  to  classify  the  above-named  ob- 
jects of  religious  belief  in  respect  to  the  sorts  of 
value  attaching  to  them.  God,  regarded  as  real, 
would  have,  first  of  all,  an  independent,  or  imme- 
diate, value  in  the  higher  religions.  For  all  forms 
of  mysticism  the  ultimate  cosmic  reality  possesses 
immediate  value.  God  v/ould  satisfy  the  believer's 
intellectual  curiosity  as  to  the  first  principle  of  the 
universe,  his  social  desire  for  a  great  Friend  above 
all  human  friends,  and  perhaps  his  esthetic  inter- 
est. God  would  also  have  an  instrumental,  real 
value  by  guaranteeing  the  final  attainment  of  the 
goal  of  man's  highest  endeavors.  When  St.  Au- 
gustine prays,  "I  seek  Thee  in  order  that  my  soul 
may  live,"  God  is  regarded  by  him  as  having  in- 
strumental value;  and  then,  when  St.  Augustine 


^The  Will  to  Believe,  p.  126. 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values        59 

speaks  of  God  as  the  supreme  good,  the  object  of 
his  belief  is  invested  with  immediate  value.  God,  if 
real,  would  always  have  at  least  conditional,  instru- 
mental value,  being  always  instrumental  in  some 
direction;  and  would  possess  actual,  instrumental 
value  when  actually  valued  because  judged  instru- 
mental. The  judgment  that  mediated  the  valuing 
might  be  either  true  or  false,  for,  though  God  is 
assumed  in  this  classification  to  be  real,  the  be- 
liever might  judge  him  instrumental  in  cases  where 
the  relation  of  instrumentality  did  not  hold. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  the  soul  ever  possesses 
immediate  value,  unless  it  is  in  the  case  of  some 
ideal  of  future  selfhood  that  one  desires  to  realize. 
In  such  a  case  the  "ideal"  future  self  would  be 
regarded  as  real,  and  hence  possessing  a  real,  im- 
mediate value,  since  it  is  assumed  in  this  classifica- 
tion to  be  realizable  sometime,  while  the  ideal 
values  of  Table  II  are  assumed  to  be  purely 
imaginary  and  never  realizable.  The  soul,  how- 
ever, is  more  important  for  the  instrumental  value 
attaching  to  it,  as  a  condition,  e.  g.,  of  immortality. 
Personal  immortality  probably  never  possesses  im- 
mediate, real  value,  but  is  only  instrumental  to  the 
rejoining  of  departed  friends  and  to  the  fulfilment 
of  those  purposes  that  death,  if  final,  leaves  in- 
complete. Indeterminism  has  only  instrumental 
value,  being  a  means  to  the  desired  freedom  of 


6o        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

choice.  The  soul,  freedom,  and  immortality,  re- 
garded as  possessing  instrumental  value,  would  pos- 
sess only  conditional  value  in  certain  cases,  when 
actually  instrumental,  but  not  recognized  as  such; 
and  actual  value  in  other  cases  when  actually 
valued  because  either  truly  or  falsely  judged  in- 
strumental. 

So  far  I  have  assumed  for  the  purposes  of  my 
classification  that  the  religious  objects  in  question 
are  realities.  If  assumed  to  be  unreal,  they  would 
be  classified  differently,  in  Table  II.  God,  if  un- 
real, would  possess  ideal,  immediate  value  if  be- 
lieved in  and  valued  directly.  Being  assumed  un- 
real, God  could  not  be  actually  instrumental. 
Hence  he  could  never  have  what  I  have  called  con- 
ditional, instrumental,  ideal  value.  He  could  have 
actual,  instrumental,  ideal  value,  however,  when 
judged,  falsely,  of  course,  to  exist,  and  to  be  in- 
strumental to  desired  ends.  The  soul,  immortal- 
ity, and  Indeterminism  would  not  possess  immedi- 
ate, ideal  values  except  in  the  one  possible  case  of 
the  soul,  corresponding  to  the  immediate,  real 
value  of  the  soul  as  noted  above.  Of  the  instru- 
mental ideal  values,  false,  actual,  instrumental 
values  are  the  only  ones  that  these  objects  could 
possess. 

The  determination  of  the  reality  of  the  objects 
of   religious   beliefs   is   a   metaphysical   problem. 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values        6i 

Whether  or  not  such  objects  are  real,  however, 
It  is  a  fact  that  there  exists  in  many  persons  belief 
in  religious  objects.  Therefore  I  shall  now  classify 
in  Table  III  the  real  values  of  religious  belief, 
regarded  as  a  psychological,  or  behavioristic,  ob- 
ject, and  viewed  apart  from  the  objects  of  belief. 

Belief  could  hardly  possess  immediate,  or  in- 
dependent, value,  except  in  the  case  where  one  be- 
lieves in  God,  and  likes  to  believe,  just  for  the  sake 
of  believing,  were  there  such  a  case.  Though  it  is 
true  that  probably  all  religious  believers  are  glad 
that  they  believe,  still  for  most  people  the  liking 
to  believe  in  God  is  not  a  sufficient  basis  on  which 
to  adopt  the  belief.  Believers  normally  believe  in 
God  because  they  think  he  exists;  though  they  may 
as  an  afterthought  value  their  belief,  and  pity  the 
unbehef  of  others.  The  more  significant  values 
of  religious  belief,  however,  are  instrumental 
values. 

The  most  important  instrumental  value  of  be- 
lief in  the  higher  religions  is  of  a  moral  sort,  even 
in  the  redemptive  religions  that  are  beyond  the 
stage  of  the  religions  of  the  law.  Religious  belief 
is  Instrumental  in  many  cases  to  higher  standards 
of  personal  conduct  than  would  otherwise  be  at- 
tainable. A  further  value  is  the  hygienic,  or  ther- 
apeutic, value  of  religious  belief.  This  again  is 
a  case  of  belief  possessing  instrumental,  real  value. 


62        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

If  belief  in  God  makes  one  happy,  and  if  one 
likes  to  be  happy,  then  rehgious  belief  is  a  real 
means  to  this  end.  If,  through  making  one  happy, 
religious  belief  benefits  one's  health,  and  if  one 
values  good  health,  then  again  belief  has  an  instru- 
mental value.  In  the  case  of  belief  both  as  hygienic 
and  as  moral  in  its  effect  there  is  real  instrumen- 
tality, and  therefore  belief  possesses  real  value  in 
such  cases — value  of  the  conditional  sort  when  the 
instrumentality  is  not  recognized.  When  the  in- 
strumentality is  recognized,  and  when  the  behef  is 
actually  prized  on  that  account,  then  the  belief  has 
true,  actual,  instrumental  value;  and  a  belief  would 
have  false,  actual,  instrumental,  real  value  when 
actually  valued  because  judged  instrumental  to 
something  of  which  it  was  not  actually  a  condition. 
It  is  chiefly  through  the  moral  and  the  hygienic 
effects  of  religious  behefs  that  they  come  to  pos- 
sess survival  value,  and  to  be  an  important  factor 
in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

There  are  other  religious  values  that  deserve 
mention,  such  as  the  instrumental,  real  value  of 
psychological  states  of  imagination  induced  by  re- 
ligious belief  and  worship,  of  emotional  states 
peculiar  to  religious  experiences,  and  of  the  overt 
acts  of  worship  that  are  the  outcome  of  religious 
belief.  ( i )  The  play  of  imagination,  when  the 
theme  is  exalted,  as  in  religion,  helps  the  mundane 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values        6^ 

consciousness  to  escape  from  the  provincialism  of 
its  ordinary  environment,  and  lends  enchantment 
to  the  commonplace  experiences  of  life.  (2)  Re- 
ligious emotional  states  may  possess  positive,  in- 
strumental, real  value,  though  there  is  always 
danger  that  their  value  may  be  negative.  Mysti- 
cism may  be  regarded  psychologically  as  a  state 
of  emotionalism,  and  as  such  it  may  possess  posi- 
tive, instrumental,  real  value.  Santayana  says 
oi  it,^*  "Although  mysticism,  left  free  to  express 
itself,  can  have  no  other  goal  than  Nirvana,  yet 
moderately  indulged  in  and  duly  inhibited  by  a 
residuum  of  conventional  sanity,  it  serves  to  give 
a  touch  of  strangeness  and  elevation  to  the  charac- 
ter and  to  suggest  superhuman  gifts."  The  nega- 
tive value  of  religious  emotionalism  appears,  for 
example,  in  the  possibility  of  gross  sensual  excess 
following  upon  revivalistic  excitement.  (3)  The 
overt  acts  of  worship  in  many  cases  possess  posi- 
tive, instrumental,  real  value  of  a  social  sort 
through  producing  concerted  action  and  thereby 
strengthening  social  bonds. 

The  question  arises  as  to  the  value  of  religious 
Truth.  Truth,  usually  spelled  with  a  capital  "T," 
is  often  identified  with  ultimate  reality,  the  goal  of 
all  striving,  etc.,  as  in  Lowell's  "Commemoration 
Ode" : 


'*Poetry  and  Religion,  p.  18. 


64        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

"Many  loved   Truth,  and  lavished  life's  best  oil 
Amid  the  dust  of  books  to  find  her, 

"So  loved  her  that  they  died  for  her, 
Tasting  the  raptured  fleetness 
Of  her  divine  completeness." 

Truth  that  possesses  "divine  completeness"  is  not 
truth  in  any  epistemological  or  logical  sense  of  the 
word.  The  poet  in  the  above  passage  is  not  sing- 
ing praises  to  the  consistency  or  coherence  among 
judgments,  or  to  the  pragmatic  "working"  of  be- 
liefs, or  to  the  correspondence  between  proposi- 
tions and  facts.  "Truth,"  as  the  word  is  often 
used  by  poets  and  preachers,  is  more  or  less 
synomymous  with  "God,"  and  consequently  its 
values  would  be  the  same  as  those  ascribed  to  God 
in  the  above  classification. 

Ill 

Returning  now  to  the  pragmatic  fallacy,  we  see 
that  it  relates  chiefly  to  what  I  have  called  the  con- 
ditional, instrumental,  real  value  of  religious  be- 
lief. The  survival  value  of  religious  belief  is  a 
case  of  conditional,  instrumental  value,  except  in 
those  cases  where  the  biological  utility  of  belief 
is  recognized,  and  where  the  value  becomes  actual 
as  value.  The  valuable  belief  need  not  have  a 
"conscious  relation  to  biological  survival,"  as  Pro- 
fessor Brightman  seems  to  think,"  in  order  to 

^See  he.  cit.,  p.  72. 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values        65 

come  within  the  category  of  values.  The  instru- 
mentality to  a  directly  valued  object  is  the  essen- 
tial thing.  The  pragmatic  fallacy  consists  chiefly 
in  passing  from  the  conditional,  instrumental 
value  of  a  belief  to  the  truth  of  the  belief,  and  in 
arguing  that  a  belief,  because  possessing  survival 
value,  must,  therefore,  be  true. 

Both  Professor  Brightman  and  Professor 
Moore  criticize  what  I  have  called  the  fallacy  of 
false  attribution,  the  fallacy  of  attributing  the 
religious  experience,  so  called,  to  "higher,"  super- 
natural forces  in  cases  where  the  experience  is 
merely  physiological  in  source — where  it  is  from 
"below"  and  not  from  "above."  Professor 
Brightman  says  that  "it  is  rigorously  logical  to 
say  that  an  event  has  a  psycho-physiological  cause, 
and  also  that  the  event  is  a  divine  act."^''  Sim- 
ilarly Professor  Moore  says:"  "The  alternative 
is  not — Are  these  experiences  subjective  or  ob- 
jective, physiological  or  divine?  .  .  .  Rather,  the 
question  is.  Are  they  also  objective  and  spirit- 
ual?" Both  would  maintain,  as  Professor 
Brightman  explicitly  does,  that  every  event  "is  a 
manifestation,  an  expression,  an  act  of  the  di- 
vine," and  that  "Kipling's  camel-'jims'  were  di- 
vinely caused."^®    The  difficulty  with  such  a  view 


^Loc.  cit.,  p.  76. 
"Loc.  cit.,  pp.  yy,  78. 
"Loc.  cit.,  p.  76. 


66        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

is  that  if  every  event  is  called  divine,  then  the 
term  "divine"  ceases  to  have  any  meaning  at  all, 
and  argument  about  it  becomes  useless.  It  then 
becomes  impossible  to  single  out  a  field  occupied 
by  religion.  That  which  applies  to  everything 
elucidates  nothing.  Moreover,  belief  in  the  uni- 
verse as  explained  in  the  naturalistic  terms  of  sci- 
entific evolutionism  is  not  a  religious  belief,  and 
can  not  be  made  into  a  religious  belief  simply  by 
substituting  the  term  "God"  for  the  term  "physi- 
cal universe."  I  submit  that  any  religious  indi- 
vidual would  cease  to  regard  himself  as  religious, 
and  in  fact  would  cease  to  be  religious,  if  he  came 
to  accept  the  naturalistic  explanation  of  his  so- 
called  religious  experiences. 

Professor  Moore  admits  that  "the  belief  that 
God  is  experienced  is  a  doctrinal  interpretation  of 
mystical  experiences,"^^  not  a  fact,  but  the  inter- 
pretation of  that  fact.  He  says,  however,  that 
"precisely  the  same  thing  is  true  of  physical  exper- 
iences."^" But,  granting  this,  we  are  confronted 
with  the  fact  that  the  naturalistic  interpretation  of 
human  experience,  if  accepted,  contradicts  the 
religious  interpretation  to  the  extent  that,  if  the 
person  having  the  "religious"  experience  gives  to 
it  a  naturalistic  interpretation,   his   former  reli- 

"Loc.  cit.,  p.  78. 
"Loc.  cit.,  p.  78. 


A  Classification  of  Religious  Values         67 

glous  reading  of  the  events  becomes  psycholog- 
ically impossible. 

Criticism  of  the  pragmatic  fallacy  and  the  fal- 
lacy of  false  attribution  that  would  undermine 
them  must  first  meet  them  on  their  own  ground. 
As  I  originally  defined  them,  and  as  I  still  main- 
tain them,  they  stand  as  genuine  and  frequently 
encountered  fallacies  in  the  logic  of  religion. 


CHAPTER  IV 

ON  TRUTH  AND  SURVIVAL  VALUE^ 

■pvR.  SCHILLER'S  article,  "Truth  and  Survival 
-■--'Value,"-  illustrates  a  characteristic  of  philos- 
ophy found  throughout  its  history,  the  character- 
istic, namely,  of  emphasis  upon  minor  differences 
of  view  while  important  points  of  agreement  are 
left  unnoticed.  The  history  of  philosophy  consists 
so  largely  of  arguments  and  contradictions  that 
philosophers  easily  acquire  the  habit  of  looking 
for  disagreement  rather  than  for  agreement.  My 
own  point  of  view  in  philosophy  is  fundamentally 
much  like  Dr.  Schiller's.  I  have  been  influenced 
in  the  development  of  my  own  ways  of  thinking 
by  none  more  than  by  James,  and  by  Dr.  Schiller 
himself;  and,  though  there  may  be  unquestioned 
differences,  as,  for  example,  between  Dr.  Schiller's 
subjectivism  and  my  own  behavioristic  views,  still 
the  habit  of  regarding  all  human  questions  from 
the  biological  point  of  view  constitutes  an  impor- 
tant initial  point  of  agreement.     In  Dr.  Schiller's 


^Reprinied,  with  change  of  title,  from  the  Journal  of  Phil- 
osophy, Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods,  Vol.  XVI  (1919), 
pp.  259-71. 

^Journal  of  Philosophy,  etc..  Vol.  XV,  pp.  505-15. 

6$ 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  69 

criticism^  of  what  I  have  called  the  pragmatic 
fallacy,^  I  feel  that  much  of  the  difficulty  and  dis- 
agreement is  largely  verbal.  Indeed,  our  essential 
agreement  on  an  allied  subject  is  shown  in  the  last 
part  of  Dr.  Schiller's  article,  where  he  has  applied 
biological  categories  in  considering  the  question  of 
pessimism  in  a  manner  precisely  parallel  to  my  own 
treatment  of  this  question  in  an  article^  that  was  in 
press  when  Dr.  Schiller's  article  appeared. 

In  the  present  chapter  I  wish  to  discuss  further 
the  question  of  the  biological  foundations  of  hu- 
man belief.  My  procedure  will,  in  the  main,  be 
in  exact  agreement  with  Dr.  Schiller's  and  with 
James's  approach  to  the  question  of  belief.  The 
question  of  the  relation  of  truth  to  survival  value, 
however,  will  eventually  arise.  As  Dr.  Schiller 
says,*'  "The  matter  cries  out  for  further  investiga- 
tion." In  considering  the  matter  I  shall  attempt  to 
make  clear  the  real  point  of  difference  between  my 
own  view  as  already  stated  and  that  of  pragmatism 
of  the  Jamesian  type,  a  type  now  represented  by 
Dr.  Schiller. 

I 

Darwinism  has  been  one  of  the  most  fruitful 


^Loc.  cit. 

*See  Chapters  II  and  III,  above. 

""'The  Biological  Value  of  Religious  Belief,"  American 
Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  XXIX  (1918),  pp.  383-92.  Re- 
printed above  as  Chapter  I. 

"Loc.  cit.,  pp.  514,  15. 


70        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

sources  of  pragmatism.  After  Darwin  had  con- 
vinced the  world  that  man  In  his  physical  aspect  is 
part  and  parcel  of  the  animal  kingdom,  James  ex- 
tended Darwinian  principles  to  the  human  mind, 
showing  how  mental  processes  can  be  understood, 
so  far  as  their  origin  and  their  present  operation 
are  concerned,  only  when  placed  against  an  evolu- 
tionary background  in  which  natural  selection  of 
useful  variations  has  been  a  vera  causa  In  the 
mind's  development.  Present-day  behaviorism  is 
one  of  the  consistent  conclusions  of  the  biological 
trend  In  psychology  which  was  given  so  strong  an 
impetus  by  the  publication  of  James's  Principles 
of  Psychology  and  other  psychological  treatises.  It 
has  been  a  short  step  from  James's  "The  Child 
as  a  Behaving  Organism,'"'  for  example,  to  pres- 
ent-day behaviorism. 

Many  of  James's  later  philosophical  views  con- 
sist fundamentally  of  an  extension  of  Darwinian 
principles  from  psychology  to  the  larger  problems 
of  philosophy;  and  Dr.  Schiller's  "Axioms  as 
Postulates,"®  and  some  of  his  other  writings,  show 
as  vividly  as  anything  in  the  literature  of  prag- 
matism the  biological  point  of  view  In  relation  to 
philosophical  questions.  But,  whereas  Dr.  Schiller 
represents  a  development  of  pragmatism  in  a  sub- 


^This  is  contained  in  the  volume,  Talks  to  Teachers,  Ch.  III. 
Published  as   Ch.   II  of  Personal  Idealism,  edited  by  H. 
Sturt. 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  7 1 

jectivistic  direction,  behaviorism  may  be  shown  to 
be  a  more  logical  development  of  James's  views. 
So  long  as  the  mental  life  is  regarded  as  somehow 
subjective  in  the  literal  sense  of  the  term,  a  com- 
pletely biological  treatment  of  the  mind  is  impos- 
sible. When,  on  the  other  hand,  consciousness  and 
behavior  are  identified,  as  in  Professor  Holt's 
view,®  for  example,  so  that  to  be  conscious  means 
to  respond  specifically  to  an  object  as  the  result  of 
external  stimulation,  while  the  content  of  con- 
sciousness is  the  external  object  responded  to,  it  be- 
comes easy  to  be  thorough-going  in  a  biological 
account  of  mental  life.  The  consciousness  of  man, 
no  less  than  that  of  the  amoeba,  may  be  treated  ob- 
jectively, in  terms  of  stimulus  and  response.  Men- 
tal variations  which  have  proved  useful  in  the 
struggle  for  existence,  and  which  have  been  pre- 
served through  the  operation  of  natural  selection, 
are  simply,  in  their  physical  context,^"  useful  modes 
of  behavior. 

For  behaviorism,  beliefs  are  not  subjective 
entities,  but  objective  processes.  A  belief  is  an 
organic  response.  The  physical  presupposition  of 
belief  is  a  system  of  reflex  arcs  so  integrated  that 


"See  E.  B.  Holt,  The  Freudian  Wish,  especially  the  supple- 
ment, "Response  and  Cognition" ;  also  The  Concept  of  Con- 
sciousness. 

"See  James,  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,  Chs.  I  and  II, 
for  an  unsurpassed  discussion  of  the  distinction  between  the 
mental  and  the  physical. 


72        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

some  given  assertion  or  proposition  may  be  re- 
sponded to  positively.  A  belief  is  an  acceptance  or 
an  affirmation  of  a  proposition,  and  may  be  either 
an  actual  response,  or,  in  the  absence  of  the  proper 
stimulus,  a  mere  organic  set  or  disposition.  Think- 
ing, likewise,  which  is  one  of  the  means  by  which 
beliefs  are  arrived  at,  is  not  an  ethereal  process 
occurring  in  a  vacuum,  but  is  a  process  consisting 
of  responses  of  the  animal  type.  Professor  Wat- 
son has  discussed  the  thinking  process  in  terms 
of  implicit  behavior  in  which  incipient  responses 
of  the  tongue  and  vocal  organs  play  a  prominent 
part."  Professor  Thorndike  has  given  a  more 
extended  account  than  Professor  Watson's  of  the 
higher  thought  processes  in  terms  of  behavior. ^- 
Professor  Dewey"  has  analyzed  the  complete  act 
of  thought  into  responses  which  he  calls  habits, 
not  "automatic  routine  habits,"  but  "habits  of  re- 
flective consideration."^*  Thinking,  according  to 
Professor  Dewey's  analysis,  consists  of  locating 
and  defining  a  recognized  difficulty,  suggesting  a 
possible  solution,  finding  the  implications  of  the 
suggested  solution,  and  testing  this  possible  solu- 


"J-  B.  Watson,  Behaiuior,  pp.  i8,  19,  324-28;  Psychology, 
Ch.  IX. 

"E.  L.  Thorndike,  Educational  Psychology,  Vol.  II,  The 
Psychology  of  Learning,  Ch.  IV,  especially  pp.  46,  47. 

'*John  Dewey,  How  We  Think,  Ch.  VI. 

"See  John  Dewey,  "Public  Education  on  Trial,"  New  Re- 
public, December  29,  1917,  p.  246. 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  73 

tion,  or  hypothesis,  through  observation  of  the 
facts.  These  operations  are  all  habitual  responses 
no  different  in  kind  from  the  simpler  animal  re- 
sponses. They  are  perfectly  definite  and  objective, 
and  may  be  treated  wholly  in  behavioristic  terms. 

Belief,  as  I  have  said,  consists  either  of  an 
actual  response  or  of  an  organic  attitude.  Belief 
is  a  positive  attitude  or  response,  as,  for  example, 
the  belief  in  the  Copernican  theory,  which  mani- 
fests itself  in  an  acceptance  of  the  proposition  as- 
serting the  theory  in  question.  Disbelief  is  a  neg- 
ative response,  a  rejection.  Doubt  is  an  unstable 
reaction,  not  definitely  positive  or  negative.  A 
proposition,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not  a  response. 
It  is,  first  of  all,  a  group  of  words,  which,  as 
words,  are  marks  on  paper  or  sounds  in  the  air. 
Words  have  meaning,  however,  which  can  ulti- 
mately be  stated,  perhaps,  only  in  terms  of  uni- 
versal. However  this  may  be,  a  proposition,  in 
the  first  place,  is  not  psychological  subject-matter; 
and,  secondly,  it  is  of  propositions  that  truth  and 
falsity  are  properly  predicable.  We  are  justified 
by  common  usage,  nevertheless,  in  speaking  of  true 
and  false  beliefs.  A  true  belief  is  really  a  positive 
reaction  to  a  true  proposition.  A  false  belief  is 
primarily  a  positive  reaction  to  a  false  proposition, 
though  a  negative  response  to  a  true  proposition 
would  be  the  equivalent  of  a  false  belief. 


74       The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

So  far  as  questions  of  positivity  and  negativity 
in  the  behavioristic  sense,  and  truth  and  falsity  in 
the  logical  sense,  are  concerned,  "belief"  and 
"judgment"  are  practically  interchangeable.  Be- 
lief is  a  more  sustained  response,  or  a  more  per- 
manent organic  disposition  or  attitude,  than  judg- 
ment, but  for  most  purposes  we  may  use  the  terms 
interchangeably  without  serious  error. 

II 

After  these  preliminary  statements,  showing 
the  point  of  view  from  which  I  wish  to  look  upon 
the  question  of  belief,  I  am  able  to  pass  directly  to 
a  consideration  of  the  biological  grounds  of  some 
of  the  actual  beliefs  which  have  been  held  in  the 
course  of  history,  and  which  are  held  at  the  pres- 
ent time.  I  have  in  mind  especially  beliefs  of  a 
more  or  less  philosophical  and  religious  nature; 
for  such  beliefs  have  been  biologically  conditioned 
in  numerous  important  and  interesting  ways. 

The  student  of  such  a  problem  will  do  well  to 
keep  his  own  philosophic  beliefs  in  the  background 
as  much  as  possible.  An  impartial  observation  of 
just  what  actual  beliefs  have  been  held  is  what  is 
desired,  not  a  crif  cism  of  these  beliefs  because  of 
their  possible  falsity.  The  scientific  attitude  of 
the  observer  who  is  himself  detached  from  the 
processes     he     is     observing,     is     assumed     by 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  75 

the  behaviorist,  whether  he  is  studying  animal  be- 
havior, the  simpler  human  mental  processes,  or 
the  more  complex  intellectual  processes  of  man. 
The  scientific  attitude  is  one  of  impartial  observa- 
tion of  facts,  whether  the  facts  are  agreeable  or 
not  to  the  observer;  and  the  behaviorist  attempts, 
first  of  all,  to  make  the  study  of  the  mind  scien- 
tific. The  scientist,  through  the  development  of 
a  rigid  experimental  method,  seeks  to  rule  out 
subjective  preferences  and  to  be  guided  by  the 
facts  as  the  sole  test  of  truth.  As  Mr.  Russell  has 
well  expressed  it,  "The  scientific  attitude  of  mind 
involves  a  sweeping  away  of  all  other  desires  in 
the  interests  of  the  desire  to  know — it  involves 
suppression  of  hopes  and  fears,  loves  and  hates, 
and  the  whole  subjective  emotional  life."^^ 

Very  few  persons,  however,  ever  develop  the 
scientific  attitude  in  its  full  purity.  People  in  gen- 
eral are  unconsciously  influenced  in  their  decisions 
and  beliefs  by  their  likes  and  dislikes,  by  their 
"subjective  emotional  life."  James  has  given  clas- 
sic expression  to  this  truth  in  his  Will  to  Believe. 
He  has  asserted^^  that  man's  passional  nature  de- 
cides for  him  doubtful  questions  that  bear  inti- 
mately on  his  life.  Not  only  popular  beliefs, 
moreover,  but  also  the  views  of  philosophers,  are 


"Bertrand  Russell,  Mysticism  and  Logic,  p.  44. 
^*The  Will  to  Believe,  p.  11. 


76        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

in  some  instances  determined  by  the  "will  to  be- 
lieve." The  impersonal  mathematical  and  labo- 
ratory methods  of  science  can  not  easily  be  applied 
to  the  solution  of  the  issue  between  idealism  and 
naturalism,  for  example;  and  undoubtedly  inher- 
ited or  acquired  emotional  attitudes  towards  life 
have  been  the  deciding  factor  in  the  trend  of 
thought  of  many  a  philosopher.  That  the  judgment 
of  the  average  man,  untrained  in  the  niceties  of 
scientific  method,  is  influenced  by  desires  and  aver- 
sions, is  so  obvious  that  it  needs  only  to  be  stated 
to  be  accepted;  while  James  has  maintained  of 
philosophers  that  temperament  really  determines 
the  acceptance  or  rejection  of  philosophic  systems. 
Bradley  has  said  similarly  that  the  efforts  of  phi- 
losophers have  been  exerted  for  the  purpose  of 
finding  reasons  to  justify  what  is  believed  instinc- 
tively. 

The  biological  foundations  of  belief  may  be 
exhibited  in  two  ways.  In  the  first  place,  it  may 
be  shown  in  what  manner  some  of  the  human  in- 
stincts, which  are  the  basis  of  man's  emotions  and 
desires,  actually  determine  his  beliefs.  Since  the 
instincts  exist  as  one  outcome  of  the  biological 
struggle  for  existence,  they  rest  upon  biological 
foundations.  In  the  second  place,  attention  may 
be  called  to  the  direct  survival  value  that  beliefs 
possess  through  their  subjective  effects  upon  the 
physical  economy  of  life. 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  77 

How  the  instincts  influence  belief  may  be  illus- 
trated by  reference  to  the  instincts  that  form  the 
subjective  support  of  religious  belief.  The  bio- 
logical basis  of  religious  belief  is  similar  to  that  of 
a  wide  variety  of  other  beliefs.  I  shall  draw  prin- 
cipally upon  Mr.  McDougall's  admirable  study  of 
the  human  instincts. ^^  Mr.  McDougall's  classifica- 
tion of  the  instincts  is  somewhat  artificial  and 
arbitrary.  Man's  nature  resists  any  such  precise 
analysis  as  he  has  made.  His  general  attitude 
towards  human  behavior,  however,  is  above  criti- 
cism; and  we  can  fall  into  no  very  serious  error  if 
we  accept,  for  practical  purposes,  his  list  of  in- 
stincts and  emotions. 

Mr.  McDougall  expresses  accurately  the  atti- 
tude that  we  should  take  in  examining  the  bio- 
logical grounds  of  belief,  when  he  says:  "Man- 
kind is  only  a  little  bit  reasonable  and  to  a  great 
extent  very  unintelligently  moved  in  quite  unrea- 
sonable ways.""  "The  truth  is  that  men  are 
moved  by  a  variety  of  impulses  whose  nature  has 
been  determined  through  long  ages  of  the  evolu- 
tionary process  without  reference  to  the  hfe  of 
men  in  civilized  societies."" 

It  is  impossible  to  maintain  successfully  that 
there  is  a  religious  instinct.     Nevertheless,  man's 


"William  McDougall,  Social  Psychology. 
''Ibid.,  p.  II. 
"Ibid.,  p.  10. 


78        The  Biological  Foundatiors  of  Belief 

religious  beliefs  rest,  as  a  general  rule,  upon  sev- 
eral instincts  as  their  necessary  support.  Mr.  Mc- 
Dougall  analyzes  the  emotional  components  of  the 
religious  life-°  into  three  complex  emotions:  ad- 
miration, awe,  and  reverence.  These  complex 
emotions,  in  turn,  he  analyzes  into  simple  emo- 
tions, each  of  which  is  associated  with  one  of  the 
primary  instincts.  Thus  he  says  that  admiration 
consists  of  wonder  and  negative  self-feeHng,  awe 
consists  of  admiration  and  fear,  and  reverence 
consists  of  awe  together  with  the  tender  emotion. 
The  simple  emotions,  then,  which  in  combination 
are  at  the  basis  of  the  religious  life,  are:  wonder, 
negative  self-feeling,  fear,  and  the  tender  emotion. 
Each  of  these  simple  emotions  coexists  with  one 
of  the  following  primary  instincts,  in  the  order 
given:  curiosity,  self-abasement,  flight,  and  the 
parental  instinct.^^  Even  though  we  should  not 
accept  all  the  details  of  Mr.  McDougall's  rather 
too  neat  and  well-ordered  classification  of  the  in- 
stincts and  emotions,  still  we  can  not  doubt  the 
connection  between  emotions  and  instincts,  and  we 
can  not  doubt  that  these  four  instincts,  and  prob- 
ably others,  form  an  indispensable  basis  for  re- 
ligious belief.  The  possession  of  these  instincts 
and  emotions  does  not  in  itself  constitute  a  man's 


*'Ibid.,  Ch.  XIII. 
^'Ibid.,  Ch.  III. 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  79 

religion.  A  man  is  not  religious  unless  he  also  has 
a  belief  as  to  the  reality  of  some  more  or  less 
supernatural  object  or  objects  about  which  these 
instincts  are  united  into  a  religious  complex.  But, 
without  such  instincts  as  driving  forces  in  human 
life,  religious  belief  would  not  exist  among  men. 

Mr.  McDougall's  discussion  of  the  instinctive 
basis  of  religion  might  be  supplemented  by  a 
greater  emphasis  than  what  he  places  upon  the  in- 
stinct (or  sentiment)  of  love  in  the  economy  of  the 
religious  life.  Freudian  psychology  explains  reli- 
gion as  a  sublimation  of  the  sex  instinct.  Human 
love,  when  denied  its  normal  human  satisfaction, 
or  else  passing  beyond  such  satisfaction,  seeks  and 
finds  compensation  in  a  religious  world  of  the 
imagination  (believed  real,  of  course) ,  a  world  the 
existence  of  which  depends  solely  upon  the  creative 
power  of  human  love.  Perhaps  the  Freudian  view 
seems  crude  and  ultra-prosaic,  but  Freud  has  sim- 
ply expressed  in  plain  words  what  poets  and  philos- 
ophers have  long  recognized.  Plato  has  described 
the  truly  religious  love  of  eternal  goodness  and 
beauty  as  a  growth  out  of  ordinary  human  love.^^ 
Emerson  has  expressed  a  similar  thought  in  re- 
verse form  in  saying,  "Love  .  .  is  the  deifica- 
tion  of   persons.""^     And   Browning,   most  em- 


^See  the  Symposium. 
*Essay,  Love. 


8o        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

phatically  of  all  poets,  makes  human  love  and  re- 
ligion closely  akin.  It  is  a  common  observation 
that  people  often  become  religious  under  either 
one  of  the  two  following  conditions.  Those  whose 
earthly  love  has  been  thwarted  may  turn  to  the 
religious  life  for  its  transcendent  compensations. 
The  classic  case  is  that  of  the  woman  who  with- 
draws from  the  world  into  a  nunnery  because  of  a 
disappointment  in  love.  On  the  other  hand,  many 
who  were  not  previously  religious  become  so  upon 
"falling  in  love."  Then,  as  Emerson  says,  "Na- 
ture grows  conscious,"  and  the  attitude  of  the 
lover  towards  the  universe  at  large  becomes  truly 
religious.  Even  definite  religious  beliefs  may  now 
be  adopted  wholly  as  a  result  of  love,  which,  in  its 
origin  and  evolution,  has  been  of  such  profound 
biological  significance. 

The  instinctive  basis  of  religious  belief  is  simply 
illustrative  of  the  biological  basis  of  many  of 
man's  more  spontaneous  opinions  and  beliefs — the 
ones  least  subject  to  exact  scientific  verification  or 
refutation.  The  conditions  of  man's  age-long  pre- 
civilized  and  even  prehuman  life,  during  which  the 
primitive  instincts  arose  and  developed,  probably 
as  chance  variations  or  mutations  preserved  by 
natural  selection,  or  perhaps  as  racial  habits  be- 
coming hereditary,  account  for  the  existence  and 
permanence  of  many  present-day  beliefs. 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  8 1 

The  further  fact  of  the  direct  survival  value  of 
certain  beliefs,  which  renders  them  permanent  in 
human  life,  whatever  may  be  the  source  from 
which  they  arise,  has  already  been  pointed  out  in 
other  connections.  Dr.  Schiller's  study  of  "Axioms 
as  Postulates""  is  a  striking  illustration  of  a  bio- 
logical explanation  of  the  rise  and  survival  of  prin- 
ciples that  have  come  to  seem  self-evident  and 
without  need  of  historical  origin.  James  has 
spoken  of  the  categories  of  our  common-sense 
ways  of  thinking  as  the  discoveries  of  "prehistoric 
geniuses  whose  names  the  night  of  antiquity  has 
covered  up,"  and  he  has  given  a  biological  ex- 
planation of  the  survival  of  these  categories.  Dr. 
Schiller  has  recently  pointed  out  that  the  accept- 
ance of  this  life  as  real  and  not  a  dream,  the  re- 
jection of  solipsism,  and  the  denial  of  pessimism, 
all  rest  upon  biological  foundations."^  In  a  similar 
manner  I  have  discussed  what  I  have  called  the 
(i)  hygienic,  (2)  moral,  (3)  industrial,  (4) 
scientific,  (5)  artistic,  (6)  social,  and  (7)  legal 
values  of  primitive  religious  beliefs,  and  the  ( i ) 
hygienic  and  (2)  moral  values  of  religious  be- 
liefs in  the  higher  religions. ^^  These  values  have 
all  been  of  a  fundamentally  biological  type. 


^Loc.  cit. 

""Truth  and  Survival  Value,"  loc.  cit. 

'"See  above,  Ch.  I. 


82        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

III 

Though,  In  the  matter  of  explaining  the  genesis 
and    the    present    basis    of    significant    beliefs, 
especially  religious  beliefs,  I  am  in  precise  agree- 
ment with  the  biological  treatment  accorded  to  the 
problem  by  such  pragmatists  as  James  and  Dr. 
Schiller,  there   arise,  nevertheless,   differences  of 
view  that  appear  so  striking  as  to  have  caused  Dr. 
Schiller  to  single  me  out"^  as  representing  in  my 
own  errors  two  fallacies  "to  which  all  logic  has 
habitually  been  addicted.'"^     Both  of  these  falla- 
cies attributed  to  me,  called  the  fallacy  of  ex  post 
facto  wisdom  and  the  fallacy  of  confounding  the 
persons,  Live  to  do  with  the  question  of  the  rela- 
tion between  truth  and  value,  especially  survival 
value.      What  I   have   called   the  pragmatic  fal- 
lacy^^  is  involved  in  the  argument.     In  my  original 
definition  of  this  fallacy  I  insisted  that  truth  was 
a    logical    matter   unrelated    to    the    question    of 
value,  and  that  the  pragmatic  fallacy  consisted  ot 
taking  value,  especially  survival  value,  as  a  test 
of  the  truth  of  beliefs.     Dr.  Schiller,  on  the  other 
hand,  like  James  in  the  later  developments  of  his 
i^riT-rmatic  views,  asserts  that,  even  though  truth 
L.iid  survival  value  are  not  identical,  "it  might  be- 

'\.nrnal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Scientific  Meth- 
00      v'ol.  XV,  pp.  508-10. 
''      ../.,  p.  508. 
■Jte  above,  Chs.  II  and  III. 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  83 

come  necessary  to  equate  [them]  In  principle."^" 
The  whole  question,  in  the  last  analysis,  reduces 
largely,  if  not  wholly,  to  a  question  of  verbal 
usage — a  question  as  to  the  application  of  the 
word  "truth."  I  accept  without  reserve  Dr.  Schil- 
ler's account  of  the  biological  grounds  of  belief. 
I  would  agree  that  "it  is  even  possible  that  ulti- 
mately and  indirectly  all  [beliefs,  though  not  all 
'truth-values']  are  affected  by  the  survival  value 
test."^^  But  I  would  assert  that  one  goes  contrary 
to  established  usage  of  the  term  "truth"  if  one 
asserts  that  the  truth  of  beliefs  is  tested  by  thei'- 
survival  value.  In  regard  to  the  biological  impos- 
sibility of  pessimism  as  a  permanent  creed,  I  have 
expressed  views, ^^  independently  of  Dr.  Schiller's 
recent  account  of  this  matter,  as  I  have  already 
remarked,  that  agree  precisely  with  Dr.  Schiller's 
account.  That  is,  I  have  maintained  that  it  is  bio- 
logically impossible  that  pessimistic  beliefs  should 
survive  in  the  race,  since,  for  biological  reasons, 
a  pessimistic  race  would  soon  perish  from  the 
earth.  But,  so  far  as  pessimism  is  conditioned  by 
some  disillusioning  naturalistic  type  of  philoso- 
phy, scientists  and  philosophers  might  agree  that 
such  a  philosophy  is  true  even  though  Its  accept- 
ance were  psychologically  and  biologically  Impos- 


'"Loc.  cit.,  p.  514. 

^'Schiller,  loc.  cit.,  p.  514. 

^'American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  XXIX,  pp.  383-92. 


84        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

sible  for  any  very  considerable  number  of  people. 
Common  sense  and  science  assert  that  "truth  is 
so,"  whether  or  not  it  is  known  by  any  human 
mind.  On  the  other  hand,  pragmatism  of  Dr. 
Schiller's  type  asserts  that  truth  is  personal  and 
subject  to  psychological  and  biological  conditions. 
I  would  myself  try  to  mediate  between  these  two 
contrary  positions.  I  would  say  that  common 
sense  and  science  are  correct  so  far  as  the  meaning 
of  the  term  "truth"  is  concerned,  for,  indeed, 
common  sense  and  scientific  usage  together  deter- 
mine the  meaning  of  any  term.^^  I  would  say  also 
that  pragmatism  is  correct  so  far  as  its  account  of 
the  genesis  and  growth  of  beliefs  in  a  fundamen- 
tally biological  context  is  concerned.  But  even  be- 
liefs that  are  universally  grounded  in  biological 
needs  of  human  nature  need  not  thereby  be  true. 
They  are  believed  true,  of  course,  for  to  hold  a 
belief  implies  believing  that  the  first  belief  is  true; 
but  beliefs  which  were  universally  held  might  fail 
to  satisfy  the  scientific  test  of  truth  if  sufficiently 
accurate  methods  of  scientific  verification  were  de- 
vised. 

It  was  recognized  by  Aristotle  that  convention 
establishes  the  meaning  and  denotation  of  words; 
but  philosophers,  m.ore  than  any  other  class  of 


*^See  the  author's  article,  "Behaviorism  and  the  Definition  of 
Words,"  Monist,  Vol.  XXIX  (1919),  pp.  133-40. 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  85 

men,  have  persistently  erred  in  insisting  that  a 
given  word  means  this  or  that,  without  asking  the 
simple,  concrete  question  as  to  what,  in  actual 
human  usage,  the  word  does  mean.  We  may 
illustrate  the  part  that  human  usage  plays  in 
establishing  the  denotation  and  the  meaning  of 
words  by  referring  to  the  original  fixing  of  names 
to  objects  in  the  growth  of  language,  speaking, 
for  the  sake  of  concreteness,  in  terms  of  an  inci- 
dent recorded  in  Hebrew  mythology.  When 
Adam  confronted  an  animal  kingdom  of  unnamed 
species,  the  cat  became  a  cat  when  he  called  it  a 
cat,  and  in  like  manner  the  dog  became  a  dog. 
"Whatsoever  Adam  called  every  living  creature, 
that  was  the  name  thereof."  Adam  did  not  create 
the  animals,  but  he  did  create  their  names,  to- 
gether with  the  relations  of  reference  that  were 
involved.  Adam  did  not  judge  that  this  animal 
was  a  cat,  that,  a  dog,  for  there  was  no  chance  of 
his  being  in  error.  The  names  of  the  animals 
were  a  creation,  not  of  Adam's  judgments,  but 
of  his  acts  of  postulations.  That  is,  Adam  created 
the  symbols  (the  names  of  the  animals)  and  arbi- 
trarily determined  what  the  symbols  should  de- 
note. I  have  spoken  figuratively;  but  for  Adam 
substitute  the  whole  human  community,  for  the 
animal  kingdom  substitute  the  entire  world  of  ob- 
jects, and  the  situation  is  not  altered  except  in  the 
extent  of  application  of  the  principles  involved. 


86       The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

The  question  of  the  meaning  of  "truth"  becomes 
first  of  all  the  empirical  task  of  asking  just  what, 
in  popular  and  in  scientific  usage,  the  word  is  used 
to  refer  to.  I  submit  that,  in  popular  or  common- 
sense  usage,  "truth"  is  thought  to  mean  simply 
what  is  "so";  and  in  scientific  usage  it  is  taken  as 
predicable  of  theories,  hypotheses,  propositions, 
and  assertions  that  conform,  in  a  definitely  recog- 
nized scientific  manner,  to  the  facts  of  the  situa- 
tions in  question.  Furthermore,  in  both  popular 
and  scientific  usage,  the  truth  is  taken  to  he  en- 
tirely independent  of  what  anyone  may  like  to 
believe,  or  of  what  anyone  may  be  led  to  believe 
for  subjective  reasons.  In  other  words,  truth  is 
depersonalized  in  popular  and  in  scientific  usage; 
truth  is  a  logical  matter  and  not  a  psychological 
matter. 

That  the  unsophisticated  mind  thinks  of  truth  in 
such  impersonal  and  immutable  terms  is  illustrated 
by  the  first  popular  response  to  the  pragmatic  the- 
ory of  truth  when  interpreted  as  offering  an  excuse 
for  lying.^*  Though  pragmatism  asserted  that  the 
valuable  in  thought  and  belief  is  the  true,  still  the 
popular  mind,  more  upright,  perhaps,  than  the 
mind  of  the  pragmatist  after  it  had  become  all 
"sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast"  of  Protagorean 
sophistries,   refused  to  give  up   its  respect   for 

"See  Schiller,  loc.  cit.,  p.  510. 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  ^7 

genuine  truth.  An  austere  respect  for  truth  as 
something  independent  of  all  personal  relations  to 
it,  is  well  expressed  by  the  poet  when  he  stoically 
asserts : 

"It  fortifies  my  soul  to  know 
That,  though  I  perish,  truth  is  so." 

The  scientific  ideal  of  depersonalized  truth  is 
well  expressed  in  the  passage  quoted  above  from 
Mr.  Russell.  Scientists  endeavor  to  establish  laws 
and  theories  which  the  objective  facts,  and  the 
facts  alone,  will  substantiate.  Sciences  succeed  so 
far  as  they  become  mathematical  and  experi- 
mental. Personal  relations  of  the  experimenter 
to  the  processes  which  he  is  studying  are  not  al- 
lowed to  prejudice  conclusions  or  to  decide  issues 
if  it  is  possible  to  avoid  such  vicious  influences. 

One  of  the  chief  differences  between  the  prag- 
matic usage  of  "truth"  and  the  scientific  usage  of 
the  term  is  presented  in  the  example,  cited  by 
James,  of  the  Ptolemaic  versus  the  Copernican 
theory  in  astronomy.  Pragmatism  claims  that 
truth  is  personal,  and  fundamentally  an  attribute 
or  predicate  of  beliefs  as  psychological  processes. 
What  is  believed  to  be  true,  and  proves  service- 
able for  definite  reasons,  is  declared  by  the  prag- 
matist  to  be  true.  Therefore  the  pragmatist  as- 
serts that  the  Ptolemaic  theory  was  actually  true 
so  long  as  it  was  believed  true,  since  the  belief 


88        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

proved  serviceable  in  various  ways.  On  the  other 
hand,  those  not  pragmatists  would  say  that  the 
Ptolemaic  theory  never  was  true,  since  it  never 
accurately  represented  the  facts  of  the  case,  as  has 
since  been  proved.  Scientists  would  assert,  fur- 
ther, only  that  the  Copernican  theory  is  probably 
true.  It  seems  to  represent  the  facts  accurately. 
But,  they  will  say,  whether  it  is  really  true  or  not 
depends,  not  upon  the  mere  serviceability  of  the 
belief,  but  upon  its  conformity  to  the  facts.  Per- 
haps, scientists  would  admit,  no  theory  can  ever 
be  shown  absolutely  to  be  true,  since  the  establish- 
ing of  its  truth  is  a  human  and  therefore  an  imper- 
fect process.  Scientists  will  insist,  however,  that 
the  truth  of  a  theory,  if  it  could  be  known  abso- 
lutely, would  be  found  to  depend  entirely  upon  its 
impersonal  relations  to  objective  facts. 

Though  the  later  developments  of  James's 
pragmatism  largely  obliterated  the  distinction  be- 
tween truth  and  value,  especially  survival  value, 
James  had  the  scientific  theory  of  truth  still  m 
mind  in  his  earlier  works. ^*  Thus,  according  to 
the  earlier  views  of  James's,  though  naturalism 
might  be  the  true  philosophy,  in  the  sense  of  being 
the  one  that  describes  the  facts  of  the  universe 
correctly,  idealistic  and  theistic  beliefs  would 
probably  persist  permanently  in  the  minds  of  men 


•See  The  Will  to  Believe,  p.  n6. 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  89 

because  man's  emotional  needs  determine  so 
largely  what  he  believes.  The  pragmatist  would 
here  assert  that  theism  is  true  because  the  belief 
persists  and  "works" ;  but  those  with  a  non-prag- 
matic theory  of  truth  would  still  maintain  that, 
in  the  universe  of  discourse  in  question,  naturalism 
would  be  true,  even  though  theistic  beliefs  per- 
sisted and  were  valuable,  biologically  and  other- 
wise. 

In  his  controversy  with  Professor  Perry,  not  so 
very  long  ago,^"  Dr.  Schiller  described  the  prag- 
matic theory  of  the  meaning  of  truth  by  means  of 
a  concrete  illustration.  Speaking  of  the  World 
War,  Dr.  Schiller  said:  "What  would  happen  if 
the  victors  prevailed  so  utterly  as  to  establish 
their  version  of  the  truth?  Would  not  the  diver- 
gent accounts  be  voted  down  as  false?  According 
to  Professor  Perry  some  of  these  deserve  to  be 
called  truer,  but  is  it  not  amazing  that  he  should 
regard  the  situation  as  not  in  the  least  derogating 
from  'the  theoretic  truth'  of  the  beliefs  that  are 
rejected."" 

On  the  contrary,  it  seems  to  most  of  us,  I  think 
I  may  safely  say,  that  it  would  be  more  amazing 
if  military  victories  should  always  be  on  the  side 
of  the  truth.    "Divergent  accounts  would  be  voted 


**Cf.  Mind,  N.   S.,  Vol.   XXIII    (1914),  PP-  386-95;  Vol 
XXIV  (1915),  PP-  240-49;  pp.  516-24. 
*'Mind,  N.  S.,  Vol.  XXIV,  p.  522. 


90       The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

down  as  false,"  because  they  would  be  voted  down 
by  the  victors,  but  is  the  cause  that  lacks  military 
support  necessarily  false?  Germany  might  con- 
ceivably have  prevailed  over  the  Allies,  but  would 
Dr.  Schiller  ever  have  accepted  as  true  the  views 
for  which  Germany  has  stood?  We  are  easily  led 
to  think  that  right  and  truth  have  always  been 
on  the  winning  side  throughout  military  history, 
but  one  reason  for  thinking  so  may  be  the  fact 
that  those  groups  which  have  been  victors  by  force 
of  arms  have  been  the  survivors  and  consequently 
the  final  judges  of  the  right  and  truth  of  the 
issues  involved.  The  biological  struggle  for  exis- 
tence is  the  most  fundamental  factor  in  determin- 
ing what  social,  political,  and  religious  beliefs  shall 
survive  and  be  held  as  true,  but  it  does  not  give 
assurance  of  the  truth  of  these  beliefs. 

So  long  as  one  maintains  the  distinction  which 
I  have  made  between  beliefs  and  disbeliefs 
as  properly  to  be  regarded  as  positive  and 
negative  responses  to  propositions,  the  prop- 
ositions being  non-psychological,  and  true  or 
false  according  to  their  relations  to  facts  ex- 
ternal to  them,  there  can  be  no  possibility 
of  committing  the  pragmatic  fallacy.  By  cour- 
tesy, as  I  have  said,  we  may  speak  of  true  and  false 
beliefs  and  judgments;  but  fundamentally  truth 
is  a  logical  matter  in  which  only  propositions,  the- 


On  Truth  and  Survival  Value  91 

ones,  hypotheses,  etc.,  are  involved,  while  the 
finding  of  these  propositions,  or  the  attempt  to 
find  them,  and  to  verify  them,  is  wholly  a  psycho- 
logical matter,  of  which  truth  and  falsity  may  not 
properly  be  predicated.  This  distinction  between 
logical  and  non-logical  matters,  between  proposi- 
tions and  beliefs,  allows  for  a  clear-cut  distinc- 
tion between  the  value  of  beliefs  subjectively  con- 
sidered, and  the  truth  of  propositions  objectively 
considered;  and  it  conforms  both  to  popular  and 
to  scientific  usage  of  the  word  "truth." 

Furthermore,  so  far  as  this  distinction  is  made, 
the  two  fallacies  which  Dr.  Schiller  ascribes  to  me 
are  not  found  in  my  statements.  The  fallacy  of 
ex  post  facto  wisdom,  relating  to  "wisdom  after 
the  event,"  as,  for  example,  in  the  case  of  the 
Ptolemaic  and  Copernican  theories,  is  clearly  nc 
fallacy  in  the  reasoning  of  one  who  separates  the 
earlier  belief  in  the  Ptolemaic  theory  from  the 
non-psychological  aspects  of  the  theory,  and  who 
separates  the  present  belief  in  the  Copernican 
theory  from  its  logical  aspects,  and  simply  con- 
tends that  the  Ptolemaic  theory  was  false,  even 
though  believed,  just  as  the  Copernican  theory 
might  now  be  false,  even  though  believed.  I  have 
simply  asserted  that  some  false  beliefs  have  had 
valuable  subjective  effects,  in  the  case,  for  exam- 
ple, of  religious  beliefs  in  the  course  of  human 


92        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

evolution ;  and  in  asserting  this  I  have  committed 
no  fallacy  of  ex  post  facto  wisdom. 

The  fallacy  of  confounding  the  persons,  again, 
can  be  asserted  only  of  those  who  predicate  truth 
and  falsity  of  psychological  processes.  Both  pop- 
ular and  scientific  usage,  to  which  I  have  tried  to 
conform  so  far  as  the  meaning  of  the  term  "truth" 
is  concerned,  depersonalize  truth;  and  usage  of 
the  terms  as  well  as  the  facts  of  the  situation  allow 
one  to  assert  of  belief  that  a  false  behef,  that  is, 
an  acceptance  of  a  false  proposition,  may  some- 
times have  value  in  case  the  believer  is  unaware 
of  his  error,  because  of  the  subjective  effect  of  the 
belief  upon  the  believer.  For  example,  the  belief 
in  God  might  contribute  to  a  man's  happiness  and 
morality,  even  though  there  were  no  God. 

Finally,  the  pragmatic  fallacy  is  still  a  genuine 
fallacy,  committed  by  those  who  maintain  that 
the  emotional  effect  of  a  belief  upon  an  individual, 
or  the  biological  effect  of  a  belief  upon  a  race,  is 
a  criterion  of  the  truth  of  the  proposition  believed. 
I  agree  with  the  pragmatic  description  of  the 
biological  grounds  of  belief,  but  I  contend  that  be- 
liefs need  not  always  be  true  in  order  to  be  valu- 
able. To  say  that  beliefs,  because  valuable,  can 
not  be  errors  or  delusions,  but  must  be  true,  is  to 
commit  the  pragmatic  fallacy. 


CHAPTER  V 

RELIGIOUS  AND  MORAL  EDUCATION^ 

nr^HERlE  is  no  such  thing  as  a  modern  infant. 
-*•  The  modern  individual  begins  his  career  at 
precisely  the  same  point  at  which  each  cave-man 
started.  Only  in  the  world  of  mythology  does  an 
individual  spring  forth,  like  Minerva,  full-fledged 
in  wisdom.  In  the  actual  world  a  long  period  of 
infancy,  childhood,  and  youth  must  precede  in- 
tellectual and  moral,  as  well  as  physical,  maturity. 
Present-day  studies  in  genetic  psychology  have  be- 
gun to  reveal  the  real  needs  of  the  child,  needs 
that  are  not  at  all  the  needs  of  the  adult.  Just  as 
the  infant's  physical  food  is  not  that  of  the  adult, 
so  the  intellectual,  moral,  and  religious  pabulum 
of  the  child  is  not  properly  that  of  the  mature  in- 
dividual. Psychology  gives  us  a  scientific  basis  for 
requiring  the  child  to  speak,  understand,  and  think 
as  a  child,  while  expecting  the  man  to  put  away 
childish  things.  Especially  in  the  field  of  religious 
and  moral  education  is  it  imperative  to  take  into 
account  the  needs  of  childhood  and  youth,  and  it 


'This  chapter  is  a  combination  of  two  articles  published  in 
the  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  XXVIII  (1917), 
pp.  504-507;  and  Vol.  XXIX  (1918),' pp.  371-82. 

93 


94        T^he  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

is  precisely  these  early  religious  needs  that  have 
been  persistently  ignored.  As  President  Hall 
says,-  "From  the  old  New  England  Catechism  to 
President  Eliot's  latest  pronouncements  reducing 
religion  to  ethical  culture,  American  educators 
have  to  an  extraordinary  degree  ignored  the  na- 
ture and  the  higher  needs  of  the  child,  and  persist- 
ently assumed  that  whatever  was  good  for  them 
was,  of  course,  good  for  him." 

My  purpose  in  discussing  the  value  of  religious 
beliefs  in  individual  development,  beliefs  of  dif- 
ferent kinds  for  different  stages  of  development, 
is  to  combat  two  tendencies  in  present-day  practice. 
One  modern  tendency  is  to  give  the  child  and  youth 
absolutely  no  religious  instruction.  Many  parents 
who  have  no  religious  beliefs  themselves  oppose 
the  teaching  of  religion  to  their  children  on  the 
ground  of  its  untruth.  If,  as  Professor  Leuba 
has  shown, ^  the  majority  of  scientists  do  not  be- 
lieve in  even  the  most  essential  of  religious  objects, 
God  and  immortality,  it  is  probable  that  many  of 
them  would  oppose  the  teaching  of  religion  to  chil- 
dren for  the  reason  that,  as  they  think,  religious 
beliefs  are  false.  Against  such  a  view  I  would 
urge  the  teaching  of  religion  for  reasons  of  its 
value,  regardless  of  its  truth.    Another  class,  the 


*G.  Stanley  Hall,  Educational  Problems,  Vol.  I,  p.  146. 
*J.  H.  Leuba,  The  Belief  in  God  and  Immortality. 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  95 

class  of  religious  believers,  would,  in  many  in- 
stances, teach  children  the  very  same  religious 
views  that  they  think  fit  and  proper  for  adults; 
and  I  would  urge  against  this  tendency  the  fact 
that  the  religious  needs  of  the  child  are  not  the 
same  as  the  religious  needs  of  the  adult. 

I 

The  correct  view-point  from  which  to  study  the 
problem  of  religious  and  moral  education  is  best 
furnished  by  the  theory  of  recapitulation.  This 
essentially  biological  theory,  when  expanded  into 
a  psychological  theory,  is  important  in  giving  a 
proper  genetic  attitude  towards  instruction  in 
religion  and  morals. 

The  similarity  between  early  human  embryonic 
stages  and  lower  forms  of  life  was  observed  by 
embryologists  early  in  the  nineteenth  century,  and 
the  theory  of  recapitulation  was  first  clearly  stated 
in  its  full  evolutionary  context  by  Fritz  Miiller  in 
1863,  and  then  by  Haeckel,  under  the  name  of 
"the  fundamental  law  of  biogenesis."  Haeckel's 
statement  of  the  law  is  as  follows:*  "The  rapid 
and  brief  ontogeny  [the  life  history  of  the  indi- 
vidual] is  a  condensed  synopsis  of  the  long  and 
slow  history  of  the  stem  (phylogeny)  :    this  syn- 


*Ernst  Haeckel  (Joseph  McCabe,  translator),  The  Evolu- 
tion of  Man,  Vol.  II,  p.  357, 


96       The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

opsis  is  the  more  faithful  and  complete  in  propor- 
tion as  palingenesis  [the  reappearance  or  repeti- 
tion of  old,  ancestral  traits]  has  been  preserved 
by  heredity,  and  cenogenesis  [deviation  from  the 
phylogeny  of  the  group]  has  not  been  introduced 
by  adaptation."  This  statement  includes  both  the 
general  law  and  its  limitations.  Each  individual 
in  its  development  repeats  its  ancestral  history, 
but  not  precisely.  Many  ancestral  traits  are  lost, 
new  traits  appear,  and  there  are  numerous  short- 
cuts. 

Though  it  is  not  maintained  by  any  biologists 
that  the  individual  in  all  the  details  of  its  develop- 
ment climbs  up  the  ancestral  tree,  still  the  theory  in 
its  broad  outlines  is  accepted  by  practically  all 
biologists.  That  this  is  true  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  the  theory  is  incorporated  in  the  standard  text- 
books of  biology  and  zoology.  Human  develop- 
ment, viewed  in  the  light  of  this  theory,  is  seen 
to  be  through  stages  represented  ancestrally  by  the 
protozoa,  by  a  radially  symmetrical  stage,  by 
bilaterally  symmetrical  forms  of  life,  /.  e.,  by  fish, 
by  amphibia,  and  by  simian  forms,  before  the  in- 
dividual becomes  relatively  human  at  about  the 
end  of  the  second  year.  Such  facts,  unquestioned 
by  biologists,  are  so  significant  that  anthropologists 
and  psychologists  have  carried  the  law  of  bi- 
ogenesis  further,   to   cover  mental  development 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  97 

through  childhood  and  youth.  There  is  not  so 
clear  a  case  for  mental  recapitulation,  yet  it  is 
denied  by  few,  and  it  is  explicitly  accepted  by  many. 
Thorndike^  is  one  who  denies  the  applicability  of 
the  biogenetic  law  to  human  development,  but  his 
arguments  against  it  are  very  inconclusive.  He 
does  little  more  than  point  out  limitations  of  the 
theory,  and  everybody  admits  that  the  theory  has 
limitations.  Thorndike  himself,  however,  accepts 
the  theory  in  some  cases.®  Baldwin^  and  HalP  are 
among  the  most  conspicuous  psychologists  who 
accept  and  employ  the  doctrine.  President  Hall 
perhaps  carries  it  to  somewhat  extreme  limits  in 
many  cases,  and  yet  his  application  of  it  to  reli- 
gious education  is  of  inestimable  value.  McDou- 
galP  also  accepts  the  theory,  as  does  Freud.^**  Pro- 
fessor Coe"  employs  the  theory  in  his  discussion 
of  religious  and  moral  education. 


*See  E.  L.  Thorndike,  Educational  Psychology,  Vol.  I,  The 
Original  Nature  of  Man,  Ch.  XVI. 

"Op.  cit.,  Vol.  II,  p.  99. 

'J-  M.  Baldwin,  Mental  Development  in  the  Child  and  the 
Race;  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations;  A  Genetic  Theory 
of  Reality. 

'G.  Stanley  Hall,  Adolescence,  2  vols.;  Educational  Prob- 
lems, 2  vols. ;    and  other  works. 

*Wm.  McDougall,  Psychology,  the  Study  of  Behaviour,  p. 
180. 

"See  especially  Sigmund  Freud  (A.  A.  Brill,  translator). 
Totem  and  Taboo,  New  York,  1918. 

"G.  A.  Coe,  Education  in  Religion  and  Morals.  See 
especially  pp.  211-25.  Mr.  Cephas  Guillet  ("Recapitulation 
and  Education,"  Pedagogical  Seminary,  Vol.  VII,  pp.  397- 
445)  has  made  an  extensive  survey  of  the  theory  in  its  general 
application  to  education. 


98        The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

If  not  carried  out  in  too  extreme  detail,  the 
theory  of  recapitulation  is  of  at  least  some  service 
in  explaining  child  development.  As  McDougall 
says  in  the  reference  given  above,  "The  study  of 
children  .  .  .  has  been  rendered  far  more  fruit- 
ful of  results  than  it  otherwise  could  have  been  by 
the  light  thrown  by  the  theory  of  organic  evolu- 
tion and  by  the  principle  of  recapitulation."  In 
the  first  two  or  three  years  of  life,  the  foetal  stage 
included,  the  individual  recapitulates  the  prehuman 
stages  of  evolution.  Phylogenetically,  prehuman 
stages  represent  an  evolutionary  period  many 
times  greater  than  the  period  during  which  man 
has  existed.  Yet  we  observe  that  the  individual 
spends  a  much  longer  time  recapitulating  human 
than  prehuman  stages.  This,  however,  is  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  general  operation  of  the  bio- 
genetic law.  The  oldest  forms  of  racial  life  are 
recapitulated  most  rapidly,  and  the  more  recent 
ancestral  forms,  more  slowly.  The  length  of  time 
taken  to  recapitulate  a  period  does  not  depend 
upon  the  phylogenetic  duration  of  the  period  so 
much  as  upon  its  recency  in  the  ancestral  series. 
It  is  to  be  expected,  consequently,  that  the  re- 
capitulation of  the  human  racial  stage,  represent- 
ing perhaps  a  duration  of  a  million  years,  should 
take  a  much  longer  time  than  the  recapitulation  of 
all  the  prehuman  phylogeny,  though  this  repre- 
sents a  period  of  many  million  years. 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  99 

President  Hall  divides  the  stages  of  individual 
development  into  four  periods,  which  he  calls  those 
of  infancy,  childhood,  youth,  and  adolescence. 
The  stage  of  infancy,  lasting  until  the  end  of  the 
second  year,  which  has  been  called  the  simian 
stage,  does  not  concern  us  now,  nor  does  the  fourth 
stage,  of  adolescence,  occurring  from  the  age  of 
about  thirteen  to  twenty-five  or  thirty,  except  the 
first  few  years  of  its  beginning,  for  recapitulation 
does  not  occur  after  the  beginning  of  adolescence. 
It  is  the  stage  of  childhood,  from  two  to  eight,  and 
that  of  youth,  perhaps  better  called  that  of  later 
childhood,  lasting  from  eight  to  twelve  or  thirteen, 
that  are  of  greatest  importance  for  our  immediate 
study.  The  age  of  childhood,  with  its  imaginative 
activities,  represents  the  savage  stage,  marked  by 
a  close  relation  to  nature  and  a  tendency  to  per- 
sonify physical  objects  and  to  confuse  the  animate 
and  the  inanimate.  The  period  of  youth  repre- 
sents racially,  according  to  President  Hall,  the 
culmination  of  a  long  line  of  savage  development 
— a  long  and  relatively  stationary  period  in  racial 
history.  This  is  the  age  preeminently  of  physical 
activity  and  practical  adjustment.  In  adolescence 
the  stage  of  later  civilization  in  the  race  gains 
ascendency  in  the  individual,  and  here  the  emotions 
tend  to  predominate. 

The  plan  of  education  on  a  recapitulatory  basis 


lOO     The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

is  to  furnish  to  the  developing  individual,  as  far  as 
this  is  possible,  the  appropriate  environment  for 
his  stage  of  development.  In  religious  education 
this  means  encouraging  the  natural  succession  of 
religious  beliefs,  just  as  they  have  occurred  in  the 
history  of  the  race. 

Religions  may  be  divided  historically  into  na- 
ture and  redemptive  religions.  The  chief  distinc- 
tions between  the  nature  and  the  redemptive  reli- 
gions may  be  expressed  in  terms  of  the  difference 
between  human  desires  for  satisfactions  of  a  tem- 
poral and  earthly  sort,  and  desires  for  transcend- 
ent satisfactions.  The  earliest,  preanlmistic  type 
of  religion,  a  later  type  dominated  by  a  generally 
animistic  philosophy,  both  types  belonging  to  the 
tribal  stage,  and  the  national,  and  more  or  less 
legalistic  religions,  such  as  are  best  illustrated  by 
early  Judaism,  would  all  be  included  under  nature 
religions.  Early  Judaism  is  a  nature  religion  for 
in  early  Judaism  Jehovah  existed  for  the  affirma- 
tion of  "this  world."  Such  religions  as  Zoroas- 
trianism,  Mohammedanism,  Brahamanism,  Bud- 
dhism, Judaism  in  its  later  development,  and  Chris- 
tianity, are  called  redemptive  religions.  There  is 
a  clear  and  recognizable  distinction  between  those 
religions  in  which  gods  are  invoked  to  satisfy 
man's  desires  for  material  prosperity,  and  other 
religions  that  offer  satisfaction  to  man's  desire  for 
"the  peace  that  passeth  understanding/' 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  loi 

It  is  possible,  I  said,  to  distinguish  two  classes 
within  the  nature  religions,  that  is,  the  primitive 
and  the  morality  religions.  The  morality  reli- 
gions, best  exemplified  by  early  Judaism,  are  still 
nature  religions,  but  they  have  advanced  beyond 
the  stage  of  the  primitive  religions,  because  of  the 
development  and  moralizing  of  the  gods,  and  es- 
pecially through  the  rise  of  some  form  of  mono- 
theism. There  is  a  moral  element  in  the  primitive 
religions,  e.  g.,  in  taboo,  but  such  a  moral  sanction 
is  clearly  on  a  lower  plane  than  the  morality  of  the 
Mosaic  code.  Thus  we  may  arrive  at  a  three-fold 
classification  of  historical  religions,  like  Sie- 
beck's,^^  including  (i)  primitive,  (2)  morality, 
and  (3)  redemptive  religions.  Such  a  classifica- 
tion is  best  for  furnishing  a  background  for  the 
recapitulation  theory. 

Roughly  corresponding  to  the  three  stages  of 
religious  evolution  in  the  race,  there  may  be  dis- 
tinguished three  stages  of  individual  development. 
Childhood  and  the  early  part  of  what  President 
Hall  calls  youth  correspond  to  the  stage  of  the 
primitive  religions.  The  period  of  youth, 
especially  the  later  part,  corresponds  to  the  stage 
of  the  morality  religions.  The  beginning  of  ado- 
lescence marks  the  rise  of  the  redemptive  religions 


"See  Hermann  Siebeck,  Lehrbuch  der  Religionsphilosophie, 
pp.  52-161. 


I02      The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

In  the  race.  Such  a  correspondence,  obviously, 
holds  only  In  a  general  way.  There  are  wide  vari- 
ations from  it,  for  individual  differences  are 
great.  It  is  an  ideal  correlation,  which  is  never 
realized  completely,  but  there  is  value  in  trying 
to  approximate  it. 

Childhood  and  youth,  according  to  the  theory 
of  recapitulation,  are  stages  of  external  authority, 
for  they  correspond  to  times  In  racial  history 
when  the  individual  was  wholly  subject  to  taboo, 
to  the  "folk-ways,"  and  to  priestly  control.  Dur- 
ing adolescence  moral  sanctions  should  lose  their 
external  character.  Beliefs  in  taboos  have  their 
place  In  childhood,  because  of  their  moral  influ- 
ence ;  and  in  youth  belief  in  a  God  of  law,  whose 
commands  are  right  because  commanded,  likewise 
possesses  positive  moral  value.  A  recapitulatory 
scheme  of  religious  and  moral  education  furnishes 
a  basis  for  discipline  in  the  early  stages  of  devel- 
opment. Out  of  the  Imaginative  nature  worship 
of  the  child  there  should  be  allowed  to  grow  a 
conception  of  a  God  who  is  the  author  of 
Inviolable  law.  Belief  in  a  stern  God  of  law 
should  only  gradually  give  place  to  belief  in  a  God 
of  love  at  the  time  of  the  emotional  awakening 
at  the  beginning  of  adolescence.  However  im- 
practicable the  theory  may  seem,  since  such  disci- 
pline is  implied  by  it,  it  has  actually  been  prac- 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  103 

ticed,  deliberately  or  unconsciously,  more  exten- 
sively than  is  commonly  supposed. 

The  early  belief  in  taboos,  and,  growing  out  of 
this,  the  belief  in  God-given  codes  of  law,  are  in- 
strumental to  the  maintenance  of  desirable  forms 
of  conduct  during  early  life,  and  to  the  formation 
of  good  habits  that  will  persist  after  the  disciplin- 
ary beliefs  that  once  supported  them  have  disap- 
peared. As  it  was  with  the  race,  so  it  should  be 
with  the  individual.  Moral  education  should 
begin  with  taboo,  and  belief  in  a  God  of  external 
authority  is  the  strongest  support  of  morality  at 
the  dawn  of  adolescence.  As  Partridge  says,  sum- 
marizing President  Hall's  view:  "The  wide- 
spread view  that  morality  can  be  taught  without 
religion  is  wrong.  .  .  .  Children  must  have  a 
sense  of  God  as  giver  of  laws,  whose  demand  is 
right  because  He  wills  it;  and  certainly  at  adoles- 
cence there  must  be  religion  to  guide  the  moral 
life,  if  at  no  other  time."" 

The  maintenance  of  a  legalistic  stage  in  the  re- 
ligious development  of  children  may  seem  at  first 
thought  like  the  imposition  of  undue  rigor  and 
sternness,  approaching  ascetic  discipline.  A  cer- 
tain degree  of  asceticism,  however,  is  defensible, 
and  necessary  for  the  sake  of  future  gain.  The 
universe  does  not  grant  immediate  satisfaction  to 


*G.  E.  Partridge,  Genetic  Philosophy  of  Education,  p.  185. 


I04     The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

all  of  man's  desires,  and  the  habit  of  accepting 
with  calmness  the  evil  with  the  good  should  be 
established  early.  An  element  of  Stoicism  is  need- 
ed in  every  stable  character,  and  the  discipline  of 
early  religious  beliefs  is  valuable  as  a  means  to 
the  attainment  of  such  a  character.  James  in- 
quires;" "Does  not  .  .  .  the  worship  of  ma- 
terial luxury  and  wealth,  which  constitutes  so  large 
a  portion  of  the  'spirit'  of  our  age,  make  some- 
what for  effeminacy  and  unmanliness?  Is  not  the 
exclusively  sympathetic  and  facetious  way  in  which 
most  children  are  brought  up  today — so  different 
from  the  education  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  es- 
pecially in  evangelical  circles — in  danger,  in  spite 
of  its  many  advantages,  of  developing  a  certain 
trashiness  of  fibre?  Are  there  not  hereabouts 
some  points  of  application  for  a  renovated  and 
revised  ascetic  discipline?" 

The  question  of  moral  discipline  divides  Amer- 
ican educational  theorists  into  two  camps.  Pro- 
fessor Dewey  represents  one  tendency,  which  is, 
in  general,  opposed  to  discipline.  President  Hall 
and  his  followers  represent  another  tendency, 
which  lays  emphasis  upon  moral  discipline.  The 
truth  probably  lies  somewhere  between  these  di- 
vergent views. 


"William   James,   The    Varieties   of  Religious   Experience, 
p.  365. 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  105 

It  is  claimed  by  Dewey  and  his  followers  that 
democracy  and  discipline  are  contradictory.  Dis- 
cipline is  supposed  to  go  along  only  with  an  auto- 
cratic and  militaristic  form  of  society.  The  lead- 
ing aim  of  American  education,  good  citizenship 
in  a  democracy,  if  it  is  to  be  achieved  through  the 
operation  of  the  principle  of  learning  by  doing, 
requires,  it  is  claimed,  that  children,  the  citizens  of 
tomorrow,  shall  learn  the  democratic  principles  of 
self-government  by  governing  themselves  today. 
President  Hall  accepts  the  theory  of  recapitulation 
as  the  basis  of  his  view  that  a  certain  amount  of 
discipline  is  necessary  in  the  moral  training  of 
children.  Such  a  view  maintains  equally  with 
Dewey's  that  democratic  citizenship  is  an  impor- 
tant educational  aim,  perhaps  the  one  most  com- 
prehensive aim  in  American  education.  It  would 
point  out,  however,  that  democracy  is  the  latest 
stage  in  racial  evolution,  a  stage  which  is  still  in 
process  of  becoming  established,  and  that  indi- 
viduals in  the  immaturity  of  their  childhood  and 
youth  ought  to  relive  the  earlier  life  of  the  race, 
with  its  priestly  control  and  its  external  constraints, 
before  being  fitted  to  take  up  the  duties  belonging 
to  the  highest  stage  of  racial  development. 

Recognizing  that  the  theory  of  recapitulation 
implies  moral  descipline,   Dewey  no  longer  ac- 


lo6     The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

cepts  it,"  though  he  did  so  earlier."  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  an  acceptance  of  the  theory,  with  its  im- 
plied discipline,  does  not  contradict  democratic 
principles;  it  simply  prescribes  a  postponement  of 
their  application  in  the  nurture  of  children. 

II 

The  questions  of  discipline  and  of  the  value  of 
taboo  and  of  beliefs  in  legalistic  religions  are  ques- 
tions that  merit  consideration  by  themselves. 
Freudian  psychology  may  be  able  to  contribute 
something  towards  a  solution  of  the  problem. 

There  is  among  educational  theorists  and  others 
at  the  present  time  a  somewhat  general  tendency 
to  rule  out  discipline,  in  favor  of  methods  that  will 
allow  free  self-expression,  with  trial  and  error  as 
the  first  of  the  ways  whereby  the  child  is  to  learn 
what  is  right  and  wrong.  Thus  Professor  Holt" 
argues  against  taboos  for  children.  He  contends 
that  unless  the  child  is  allowed  to  follow  up  his 
impulses  to  their  conclusions,  and  to  learn  avoid- 
ing reactions  in  the  case  of  undesirable  and  danger- 
ous objects  through  experience  with  the  objects 
themselves,  the  proper  integration  of  reflexes  will 
not  occur  to  make  later  conduct  reliable.  This  is 
all  true  within  limits:  but  in  many  cases  the  bad 


^Democracy  and  Education,  1916,  pp.  84-89. 

^*The  School  and  Society,  1899,  p.  62. 

"E.  B.  Holt,  The  Freudian  Wish,  Chs.  Ill,  IV. 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  107 

consequences  of  an  act  are  so  long  deferred  that 
the  child  will  never  associate  the  consequences  with 
the  cause;  or  the  consequences  may  in  some  cases 
be  immediately  disastrous,  or  perhaps  fatal.  In 
such  cases  the  child  learns  nothing  from  the  ex- 
periences, or  else  learns  at  too  great  a  cost. 

Professor  Holt's  argument  against  taboo  is  in- 
adequate for  it  is  based  upon  an  inadequate  con- 
ception of  taboo.  His  example  of  taboo  is  not  an 
instance  of  taboo  at  all.  He  argues  that,  in  the 
case  of  the  child  who  is  forbidden  by  the  mother 
to  touch  the  flame,  the  child's  behavior  becomes  a 
function,^*  not  of  the  flame  alone,  but  of  the  situa- 
tion— the  flame  plus  the  mother.  From  this  it 
follows,  Professor  Holt  says,  that  In  the  absence 
of  the  mother,  who  is  the  source  of  the  taboo,  the 
child  will  burn  himself  in  the  flame.  But  this  is  not 
a  case  of  taboo  at  all.  Taboo  involves  belief  in 
some  superhuman,  invisible  intervention  in  the 
event  of  doing  a  forbidden  act.  So,  in  the  case  of 
genuine  taboo,  there  is  no  harm  caused  by  be- 
havior becoming  a  function  of  the  object  plus  the 
taboo-character  of  the  object.  The  source  of  the 
taboo  is  always  present,  and  safe  conduct  is  there- 
by assured.  In  later  life  the  belief  in  many,  per- 
haps all,  earlier  taboos  will  disappear,  but  proper 


"See  Professor  Holt's  definition  of  behavior,  op.  cit.,  Sup- 
plement, "Response  and  Cognition,"  pp.  153-208. 


io8      The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

conduct  will  continue  in  most  instances  for  two 
reasons:  first,  because  the  correct  habits  that  have 
been  formed  under  the  influence  of  taboo  will  tend 
to  persist  and  to  act  just  as  mechanically  as  original 
instincts;  and,  second,  because,  for  the  more  ma- 
ture individual,  new  and  adequate  rational  sanc- 
tions for  the  continuance  of  the  acquired  type  of 
conduct  arise  and  take  the  place  of  the  original 
taboos.  No  harm  results  even  if  all  taboos  do  not 
disappear,  for,  as  James  says,  "The  highest  form 
of  character,  .  .  .  abstractly  considered,  must 
be  full  of  scruples  and  inhibitions."^^ 

The  two  most  fundamental  instincts,  from 
which  the  other  instincts  have  developed,  are  the 
food-getting  and  the  sex  instincts.  The  regulation 
of  the  sex  instinct  is  one  of  the  constant  problems 
confronting  society.  I  would  contend  that,  just  as 
all  education  in  sex  morality^"  in  the  race  began  in 
taboo,  so  sex  taboo  of  some  sort  is  necessary  for 
the  maintenance  of  desirable  standards  of  conduct 
during  the  formative  stages  of  individual  develop- 
ment. Miinsterberg^^  argued  for  a  certain  amount 
of  taboo  in  sex  education.  McDougall"  advises 
against  too  great  a  rationalization  of  the  sex  prob- 
lem in  early  education.    And  Freud  recognizes  the 


^Talks  to  Teachers,  p.  179. 

"'See  Ernest  Crawley,  The  Mystic  Rose. 

"See  Psychology  and  Social  Sanity,  pp.  17-19;   59-61. 

"Social  Psychology,  8th  edition,  pp.  419-21. 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  109 

necessity  of  inhibitions  for  physical  and  moral  rea- 
sons, as  a  part  of  the  sublimation  process. 

Freud  insists  upon  the  necessity  of  early  sub- 
limation of  sex  energy  into  socially  useful  chan- 
nels; and  sublimation,  though  positive,  requires 
as  its  correlate  a  negative  factor  to  check  the  pri- 
mary expressions  of  sex  in  children.  A  recapitu- 
latory theory  of  religious  education  provides  both 
the  negative  factor,  some  sort  of  taboo  or  reli- 
gious interdiction,  and  also  the  positive  conditions 
that  favor  sublimation  through  supplying  the 
growing  individual  with  an  environment  suited  to 
call  out  such  activities  as  are  socially  acceptable 
and  also  in  accord  with  the  developing  interests 
of  the  individual.  Harm  would  result  if  the  prim- 
itive desires  and  activities  of  children  were  for- 
bidden, and  if  at  the  same  time  no  new  positive 
interests  were  encouraged ;  but,  along  with  the  en- 
couragement of  new,  socially  desirable  activities, 
undesirable  tendencies  must  be  discouraged. 

On  Freudian  principles  religion  is  a  valuable 
form  of  sublimation,  especially  at  the  beginning 
of  adolescence,  as  well  as  earlier.  Freud  says: 
'*Owing  to  the  oppositional  relation  existing  be- 
tween culture  and  the  free  development  of  sex- 
uality, the  results  of  which  may  be  traced  far  into 
the  formation  of  our  life,  the  problem  how  the 
sexual  life  of  the  child  evolves  is  ...  of  very 


no     The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

great  importance  in  the  higher  stages  of  culture 
and  civilization."^^  Sublimation  is  the  process  by 
which  sexual  energy  is  utilized  in  other,  non-sex- 
ual spheres,  and  in  directions  which  are  more  ap- 
proved of  by  society,  and  which  are  ultimately  of 
more  value  for  the  individual  as  well  as  for  soci- 
ety. Art  and  religion  are  the  chief  forms  in  which 
sublimated  sex  energy  expresses  itself. 

According  to  Freud,  the  child  has  numerous 
perversions  in  his  sexual  predispositions.  That  is, 
in  his  earliest  years  he  has  tendencies  towards 
homo-sexuality,  exhibitionism,  sadism,  masochism, 
etc.  It  is  through  sublimation  of  these  perverse 
tendencies  that  normal  sexuality  and  a  moral 
character  are  developed.  The  "sexual  latency 
period,"  from  about  the  fourth  year  to  the  begin- 
ning of  puberty,  is  the  time  when  repression  of 
perverse  tendencies,  and  sublimation,  are  neces- 
sary. Inhibition  of  the  early  tendencies  is  neces- 
sary if  neurotic  disturbances  are  to  be  avoided  in 
later  life.  Both  normal  and  neurotic  adults  pos- 
sess repressions  in  some  degree.  In  neurotic  in- 
dividuals the  repressions  are  not  complete,  and 
they  consequently  manifest  themselves  as  symp- 
toms of  the  neuroses,  while  in  normal,  healthy 
individuals  repressed  wishes  are  inert,  or  else  they 


"Sigmund  Freud,   Three  Contributions  to  Sexual  Theory 
(A.  A.  Brill,  translator),  p.  85. 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  1 1 1 

manifest  themselves  only  in  dreams.  Repression 
alone,  without  sublimation,  or  substitution,  will 
always  have  bad  results;  but  Freud  and  most 
Freudians  recognize  the  necessity  of  social  and 
religious  restraints,  inhibitions,  and  taboos,  as  a 
part  of  the  normal  sublimation  process.  Thus 
Brill  says: 

"Were  it  not  for  the  severe  checking  the  indi- 
vidual constantly  experiences  from  the  very  begin- 
ning of  his  childhood,  which  causes  him  to  give 
up  most  of  his  desires,  it  would  be  impossible  to 
live  in  any  society,  savage  or  enlightened.  .  .  . 

"This  inhibiting  process  begins  in  childhood 
and  is  continued  throughout  life.  .  .  .  Through- 
out the  whole  course  of  our  existence,  society 
(religion  and  ethics)  teaches  us  to  curb  our  de- 
sires and  to  give  up  what  we  want.  We  want 
much  and  we  get  comparatively  little,  but  we 
never  stop  wanting.""^* 

"Civilization,  so  called,  simply  consists  of  inhi- 
bitions imposed  upon  the  individual  by  religion 
and  society.  The  more  one  can  inhibit  his  primi- 
tive impulses  the  more  cultured  he  is,  and  savages 
and  children  must  be  taught  inhibition  to  fit  them 
for  society."" 

There  is  no  virtue,  of  course,  in  curbing  desires 


"A.  A.  Brill,  Psychanalysis,  pp.  40,  41. 
'Ibid.,  p.  263. 


112     The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

except  for  the  sake  of  greater  satisfactions;  and 
it  is  for  precisely  this  result  that  many  of  the 
desires  of  early  childhood  should  be  repressed  and 
sublimated.  Later  health,  not  only  moral,  but 
also  physical,  requires  sublimation,  according  to 
Freud.  Whether  the  activities  of  the  child  shall 
develop  into  socially  acceptable  forms,  depends 
upon  the  success  that  attends  sublimation.  Later 
neuroses  result  from  unsuccessful  sublimation  and 
repression. 

Freud's  psychology  has  a  distinct  recapitulatory 
background.  This  is  shown  especially  in  his  book, 
Totem  and  Taboo,  as  is  suggested  by  the  sub-title, 
"Resemblances  between  the  Psychic  Lives  of  Sav- 
ages and  Neurotics."  Since  the  adult  neurotic 
individual  represents  a  continuation  of,  or  rever- 
sion to,  psychic  infantilism  in  the  sexual  life,  the 
normal  child,  like  the  neurotic  adult,  is  on  a  mental 
plane  corresponding  to  that  of  the  savage.  What 
is  normal  for  the  savage  and  for  the  child,  is  a 
symptom  of  disease  in  the  civilized  adult. 

Freud  probably  overemphasizes  the  role  of  the 
sex  instinct  in  the  economy  of  life,  both  in  healthy 
and  in  diseased  conditions.  Such  is  the  opinion  of 
many  critics.  But  critics  such  as  McDougall,^* 
while  rejecting  Freud's  extreme  emphasis  upon 
the  centrality  of  sex,  are  glad  to  accept  his  notion 


''Op.  cit.,  Supplementary  Ch.,  II,  "The  Sex  Instinct." 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  113 

of  sublimation.  Suppression  of  the  primary 
forms  of  sex  expression,  and  sublimation  of  sex 
energy  into  more  desirable  channels  under  the 
guidance  of  religious  belief,  have  definite  results 
of  great  value,  as  McDougall  points  out." 

Much  of  the  sublimation  in  later  childhood 
would,  in  an  ideal  scheme  of  things,  take  place 
under  the  influence  of  religion  of  the  legalistic 
sort.  Then  at  adolescence  sublimation  would  re- 
sult, as  it  actually  does  in  numerous  cases,  in  a 
development  into  a  new  stage  of  religion,  the  stage 
of  the  redemptive  religions.  As  McDougall  says,^* 
"The  intensification  of  thought  and  feeling  [due 
to  sublimation]  may  affect  principally  the  religious 
interests,  and  then  becomes  a  main  condition  of  the 
conversion  which  is  so  characteristic  of  adoles- 
cence." So  it  is  seen  how  religious  beliefs  corre- 
sponding to  beliefs  of  the  legalistic  stage  in  racial 
evolution  have  positive  value  at  the  beginning  of 
adolescence  in  guiding  the  moral  life  and  in  caus- 
ing continued  sublimation  and  a  normal  growth 
into  the  redemptive  stage  of  religion.  In  the  words 
of  President  Hall:  "Adolescence  ...  is  a 
period  when,  whatever  may  be  the  truth  about  it, 
it  is  a  wholesome  pedagogical  method  to  apply  a 


"Ibid.,  p.  424. 
"'Ibid.,  p.  424, 


114     The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

transcendental,  supernatural  cult."^®  "Religion, 
which  has  been  the  chief  agent  in  regulating  it 
[sex]  in  the  past,  must  be  also  looked  to  in  the 
future."'" 

During  early  adolescence  religious  belief  has  a 
pronounced  moralizing  influence  from  the  fact  that 
the  attribution  of  the  new  experiences,  which  are 
more  or  less  inevitable  at  this  time,  to  "higher" 
sources  lends  a  seriousness  and  even  sacredness  to 
the  experiences  and  to  life  as  a  whole.  The  in- 
dividual who,  with  truer  scientific  insight,  perhaps, 
attributes  his  new  experiences  of  early  adolescence 
wholly  to  physiological  processes,  possessing  no 
religious  significance  at  all,  fails  to  get  the  inspira- 
tion of  high  moral  ideals  that  are  so  valuable  at 
this  stage  of  development.  The  new  emotions  may 
be  interpreted  grandly  or  meanly,  from  "above" 
or  from  "below,"  idealistically  or  physiologically. 
For  those  experiencing  the  emotions  there  is  value 
in  the  idealistic  and  religious  way  of  interpreting 
the  experiences. 


Ill 


Directly  continuous  with   the   problem   of   re- 
ligious and  moral  education  is  the  problem  of  in- 


™"ColIege  Philosophy,"  The  Forum,  Vol.  XXIX   (iQOo),  p. 
412. 
^Educational  Problems,  Vol.  I,  p.  460. 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  115 

struction  in  philosophy.  The  teacher  of  philosophy 
tends  to  be  so  exclusively  a  system-builder,  with  an 
eye  single  to  the  logical  construction  of  his  philos- 
ophy, that  the  concrete,  human  needs  of  his  stu- 
dents are  apt  to  be  lost  sight  of.  In  general  educa- 
tional theory  there  is  taking  place  a  reform  of 
method,  and  a  reaction  against  the  mere  teaching 
of  subject-matter  regardless  of  the  interests,  apti- 
tudes, and  needs  of  the  pupils.  Teachers  formerly 
taught  subjects  of  study;  now  they  teach  children. 
The  lesson  learned  from  the  elementary  schools, 
that  teaching  should  be  ordered  primarily  to  fit 
the  psychological  needs  of  the  pupils  rather  than 
the  logical  claims  of  the  subject-matter,  may  with 
profit  be  extended  to  the  teaching  of  philosophy  to 
college  undergraduates. 

The  vast  majority  of  individuals  never  become 
students  of  metaphysics  in  any  technical  sense  of 
the  term.  Of  those  who  study  philosophy  in  col- 
lege, many  simply  "take  courses,"  for  sundry  rea- 
sons, without  ever  acquiring  much  interest  in  the 
subject.  With  a  large  number  of  the  students  who 
really  become  interested  in  philosophy,  religious 
doubt  is  the  beginning  of  a  philosophical  interest 
that  arises  in  the  attempt  to  bolster  up  a  waning 
faith.  Metaphysical  interests  arise  in  others  as 
a  direct  outgrowth  of  the  developing  sex  life  in 
early  adolescence,  as  in  the  case  of  Don  Juan,  who 


1 16     The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

"Did  the  best  he  could 
With  things  not  very  subject  to  control, 
And  turned,  without  perceiving  his  condition, 
Like  Coleridge,  into  a  metaphysician. 

"He  thought  about  himself,  and  the  whole  earth, 
Of  man  the  wonderful,  and  of  the  stars. 
And  how  the  deuce  they  ever  could  have  birth."" 

As  the  poet  says,  with  true  Freudian  insight,  "pu- 
berty assisted"  in  bringing  about  Don  Juan's  phil- 
osophical interests. 

Mere  intellectual  curiosity,  or  the  pure  love  of 
wisdom  for  its  own  sake,  is  a  possible  though 
negligible  cause  of  a  student's  interest  in  philos- 
ophy, at  least  at  the  beginning  of  his  studies.  As 
a  general  rule,  philosophy  is  valued  at  first  only 
as  an  aid  in  solving  the  fundamental  problems  of 
life,  and  not  as  an  end  in  itself.  With  prolonged 
study,  perhaps  unfortunately,  philosophy  may  be- 
come an  end  in  itself,  divorced  from  all  practical 
problems  of  life,  through  a  psychological  process 
like  that  involved  in  the  case  of  the  man  who  took 
his  first  drink  to  save  his  life,  and  thereafter  lived 
to  drink. 

"Longings  sublime  and  aspirations  high"  come 
naturally  enough  during  adolescence,  and  the  in- 
struction of  college  undergraduates  should  have 
due  regard  for  the  moral  needs  of  the  students. 
College  students  of  philosophy  desire  little  phil- 


"Byron,  "Don  Juan,"  xci,  xcii. 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  117 

osophic  dogmatizing  from  instructors,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  a  free  field  in  which  to  draw  their  own 
conclusions.  The  trend  of  their  speculations  can 
be  guided,  however,  if  instruction  is  insinuated 
gently,  and  not  applied  bluntly.  Since  meta- 
physics is  a  subject  on  which  the  most  learned  of 
doctors  disagree  violently,  disciples  are  free,  to  a 
large  extent,  to  choose  metaphysical  conclusions, 
such,  at  least,  as  are  really  relevant  to  human  con- 
cerns, upon  the  basis  of  value,  regardless  of  truth. 
The  question  thus  presents  itself  as  to  the  sort  of 
philosophic  beliefs  that  are  most  valuable  for  stu- 
dents. This  problem  is  similar  to  the  problem  of 
the  value  of  religious  belief. 

Whatever  may  be  the  latest  philosophic  con- 
clusions of  a  teacher  of  metaphysics,  they  are  usu- 
ally not  the  same  as  his  earliest  conclusions.  The 
failure  of  a  man's  metaphysical  views  to  broaden 
and  grow  with  continued  study  would  be  an  indica- 
tion of  intellectual  stagnation.  In  every  special 
science,  at  least  some  few  results  are  established, 
and  accepted  by  all  scientists  without  question. 
Such  results  have  become  fixed  in  the  standard 
text-books.  But  metaphysics  is  a  different  matter. 
There  is  no  generally  accepted  text-book  of  meta- 
physics. When  it  is  the  case  that  the  teacher  of 
philosophy  has  come  to  have  somewhat  different 
philosophic  views  from  the  ones  that  he  held  when 


1 18      The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

he  was  a  younger  student,  as  is  the  normal  case, 
he  is  very  likely  to  infer  from  this,  if  his  attention 
is  called  to  the  matter,  that  his  own  students  will 
not  at  first  acquire  philosophic  truths  in  final  form. 
Even  if  there  be  final  and  absolute  Truth  in  meta- 
physics, the  human  acquisition  of  this  Truth  is  a 
psychological  process,  always  incomplete  and  al- 
ways imperfect.  The  teacher  of  philosophy,  as  a 
teacher,  should  be  primarily  concerned,  not  with 
absolute  Truth,  but  with  the  psychological  learning 
processes  of  his  students  in  their  acceptance  of  some 
views  and  rejection  of  others,  for  emotional  as 
well  as  for  logical  reasons.  The  student  believes 
that  his  conclusions  are  reached  by  purely  intel- 
lectual processes,  but  the  educational  psychologist 
recognizes  that  the  passional  nature  is  a  large  fac- 
tor in  the  process. 

Since  human  nature  is  such  as  it  is,  idealistic 
systems  of  philosophy,  whether  true  or  not,  will 
always  appeal  to  students  of  philosophy,  and  will 
be  accepted  by  many  for  the  reason  that  man's 
emotional  nature,  in  so  many  cases,  requires  some 
sort  of  idealistic  beliefs  about  reality.  As  James 
says,  man's  "will  to  believe"  will  assert  itself  in 
a  large  percentage  of  cases,  and  will  accept  an 
idealistic  view  of  things  because  such  a  view  is 
congruent  with  certain  vital  needs.  Whether  or 
not  many  of  the  current  systems  of  philosophy 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  119 

that  are  called  idealistic  really  offer  support  to 
man's  specific  religious  beliefs,  even  the  most 
fundamental  of  them,  is  a  question  that  need  not 
be  raised.  They  at  least  seem  to  most  students  to 
do  so,  to  offer  a  refuge  of  respectable  supernatu- 
ralism  against  the  encroachments  of  scientific 
naturalism.  Upon  the  basis  of  value,  and  regard- 
less of  objective  truth,  the  teaching  of  the  great 
historical  systems  of  idealism  is  certainly  justifi- 
able.^^ To  force  upon  students  a  completely 
naturalistic  philosophy,  even  if  such  were  the  true 
philosophy,  a  philosophy  that  proclaims  the  uni- 
verse to  be  essentially  indifferent  to  the  ideals  of 
man,  would  be  extremely  disintegrating,  especially 
for  those  adolescents  who  were  glowing  with  the 
enthusiasm  of  new  moral  aspirations.  Naturalis- 
tic beliefs  would  crush  out  the  incentive  to  noble 
effort.  But  belief  in  idealistic  philosophies,  with 
their  appearance  of  devoutness,  however  vague, 
lends  grandeur  to  the  universe,  and  zest  to  the 
moral  urgings  of  the  individual  life.  Several  men 
of  my  acquaintance,  recent  graduate  students  in 
philosophy  and  in  other  departments  at  Harvard, 
have  told  me  that,  while  not  now  calling  them- 
selves metaphysical  idealists,  they  nevertheless 
gained  moral  support  and  stability  of  character 
through    studying,    when    undergraduates,   such 


•See  G.  Stanley  Hall,  Adolescence,  Vol.  II,  p.  551. 


I20      The  Biological  Foundations  of  Belief 

sympathetic  treatments  of  idealism  in  its  modern 
historical  forms  as  are  found  in  some  of  the  chap- 
ters of  Royce's  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy. 
This  is,  I  think,  a  not  uncommon  experience.  It 
is  reported"^  that  Jowett  encouraged  the  study  of 
the  philosophy  of  T.  H.  Green  by  Balliol  under- 
graduates because  of  its  religious  value  for  the 
students  who  were  in  search  of  a  substitute  for 
their  earlier  religious  beliefs. 

Moral  idealism  is  theoretically  independent  of 
any  particular  religion  or  system  of  metaphysics. 
It  can  be  established  to  the  full  satisfaction  of  the 
intellect  along  with  a  naturalistic  metaphysic  as 
well  as  with  an  idealistic  one.  But  practically,  for 
actual  human  beings,  most  of  whom,  fortunately, 
are  very  incompletely  intellectualized  and  de-emo- 
tionalized, theoretical  moral  idealism  can  become 
embodied  in  actual  conduct  only  through  the  in- 
strumentality of  religious  and  idealistic  beliefs. 
Belief  in  God  and  immortality,  for  example,  tends 
to  moralize  the  whole  life,  and  to  support  such 
forms  of  conduct  as  are  judged  by  the  theorist  to 
be  right.  The  ethical  theorist  is  concerned  with 
discovering  what  is  right.  The  preacher  is  con- 
cerned with  influencing  the  will  of  man  to  do  the 
right,  that  is,  with  making  man's  conduct  conform 
to  the  standards  set  up  by  the  theorist.     Similarly 


**See  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  Studies  in  Humanism,  pp.  278-81. 


Religious  and  Moral  Education  1 2 1 

the  teacher  of  philosophy  has  a  mission  to  per- 
form in  offering  to  youthful  students  such  phil- 
osophic behefs  as  will  encourage,  not  discourage, 
moral  effort  on  their  part. 


INDEX 


Aristotle,  84. 

Baldwin,  J.  M.,  97. 

Belief,  behavioristic  account  of, 
53-54,  7i#- 
Physiological    eflfects    of,    3, 

7-8. 
See  "religious  belief." 

Beliefs  of  scientists,  3,  94. 

Biological    grounds    of    belief, 
74,  76#. 

Biological  value  of  religious  be- 
lief, iff,  14,  74#. 

Birth-rate  and  religious  belief, 

2lff. 

Booth,  M.,  25-26. 
Brightman,  F.  S.,  42,  44#,  64-65. 
Brill,  A.  A.,  III. 
Browning,  18-19,  79-8o. 
Byron,  1 15-16. 

Caird,  Edward,  9. 
Calvinism,  58. 
Carver,  T.  N.,  4-5. 
Classification    of    religious 

values,  49j^. 
Coe,  G.  A.,  40,  41,  97. 
Coulanges,  Fustel  de,  21-22. 

Darwinism     and     pragmatism, 
69#. 
And  religious  truth,  43. 
Dewey,  J.,  72,  105-06. 
Discipline,  moral  and  religious, 
102 ff. 

Education,  and  democracy,  105. 
Religious,  93#. 
Recapitulatory  theory  of  re- 
ligious, 9S#,  I02#,  109. 


Ehrenfels,  C.  von,  43. 
Emerson,  79-80. 

Fallacy  of  false  attribution,  27, 

35 ff,  41.  65 ff. 
Frazer,  J.  G.,  7-S. 
Freedona,  55. 
Freud,  S.,  79,  97,  I09#. 

God,  55#. 
Goethe,  3-4. 
Group  selection,  10. 

Haeckel,   E.,  95-96. 

Hall,  G.  S.,  94,  97,  99,  103,  105, 

113,  119. 
Hocking,  W.  E.,  16,  36,  39-40. 
Holt,  E.  B.,  71,  106-07. 

Idealism,  19,  Ii8#. 
Immortality,  S5ff. 
Instincts  in  jeligion,  78^. 
Indeterminism,  55,  57-58. 

James,  Wm.,  2,  i6#,  28-29,  33#, 
55#,  70-71,  75-76,  82,  87, 
104,  108. 

Kidd,  B.,  24. 
Kipling,  36. 

Leroy-Beaulicu,  P.,  23-24. 
Leuba,  J.  H.,  2,  4,  40,  94. 
Lowell,  63-64. 

Materialism,  2,  119-20. 
McDougall,   W.,    9,   23-24,   26, 

77 ff,  97-98,  108,  1 12-13. 
Meinong,  A.,  43. 
Metaphysics,  iisff. 


123 


124 


INDEX 


Moore,  G.  E.,  6,  28. 
Moore,  J.  S.,  42,  47-48,  65#. 
Morality  and  religion,  9,  120. 
Miiller,  F.,  95. 
Miinsterberg,  H.,  108. 
Mysticism,  34#,  63. 

Natural  selection,  8,  14-15. 
Nature  religions,  14,  100-01. 
Nitti,  F.  S.,  23. 

Optimism,  and  religion,  15-16, 
18-19. 
Browning's,  18-19. 

Partridge,  G.  E.,  103. 

Perry,  R.  B.,  33-34,  49-50,  89. 

Pessimism,  i6#,  69,  83. 

Pfleiderer,  O.,  9. 

Philosophy,  religious  and  moral 

value  of,  n4#. 
Plato,  79- 
Pragmatic  fallacy,  19,  27ff,  42ff, 

64-65,  67,  69,  82,  92. 
Pragmatism,  29,  69,  84,  86#. 
And  Darwinism,  69#. 

Rashdall,  H.,  7- 
Read,  C,  sff. 

Recapitulation,  theory  of,  gsff- 
Recapitulatory    theory    of    re- 
ligious education,  95#,  I02#, 
109. 
Redemptive  religions,  14,  100. 
Religion,  and  morality,  9,  120. 
And  sex,  38,  40,  79-80. 
Instincts  in,  78#. 
Religious  belief,  biological  value 
of,  iff,  14,  74#- 


Objects  of,  55. 

Values  of,  Bff,  ssff,  6i#,  81. 

Value  of  false,  2,  32. 
Religious   education,  gsff. 
Religious   values,   classification 

of,  49#- 
Royce,  J.,  39,  41. 
Russell,  B.,  15-16,  23,  28,  75,  87. 

Santayana,  63. 

Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  42,  68#,  8i#, 
120. 

Scientific  attitude,  75,  87. 

Sex  and  religion,  38,  40,  79-80. 

Sex,  sublimation  of,  i09#. 

Siebeck,  H.,  loi. 

Soul,  55,  57. 

Stages  of  individual  develop- 
ment, 99,  101-02. 

Stages  of  religious  evolution, 
ioo#. 

Sublimation  of  sex,  I09#, 

Survival  value  of  religious  be- 
lief, 43,  81. 

Taboo,  3,  7,  lo-ii,  102-03,  106. 
Theism,  33. 
Thomson,  J.,  17. 
Thorndike,  E.  L.,  72,  97. 
Truth,  28,   53-54,  63-64,  73-74. 
82j^,  91-92. 

And  value,  6,  28-29,  68#. 

Test  of,  31,  37. 

Value,  meaning  of,  43j!f. 

Watson,  J.  B.,  72. 
Webb,  S.,  24-25. 
World  War,  89. 


DATE  DUE 

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